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NORWAY 

rHROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

NOTES ON 
A Journey Through the Land of the Vikings 

ARRANGED BT 

M. S. EMERY 












EDITED Br 
JULIUS E. OLSON 

Professor of the Scandinavian Languages 

and Literature 

in the University of Wisconsin 

INTRODUCTION BV 

HON. KNUTE NELSON 

of the United States Senate 










UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 












LIBRARY of COI«RESS I 
Two GopiM ReceiVQd f 
JUL 18 1907 

COPY U. 






Copyright, 1907 

By underwood & UNDERWOOD, 

New York and London 

(entered at stationers* hall) 



All stereographs copyrighted 



MAP SYSTEM 
Patented in the United States, August 21, 1900 
Patented in Great Britain, March 22, 1900 
Patented in France. March 26.11900. S.G.D.G. 
Switzerland, Patent 21,211 



All rights reserved 



Printed in the United Statbs 



CONTENTS 



PAGE. J 

Introduction 11 ^ f 

What has Norway for the Traveler 14 

How TO Travel by Means of the Stereoscope 19 

SEEING NORWAY 

positions. 

1 Christiania and her busy harbor, northwest from 

the Ekeberg (Royal Palace at right) 30 

2 Leavit g old home and friends — waving goodbyes .to 

emigrants starting for America, Christiania 32 

3 The Great Market around statue Christian IV — east 

to Church of our Saviour, Christiania 34 

4 Christiania's largest market 36 

5 Karl Johan Street, W. N. W. to the Royal Palace, 

Christiania 38 

6 Norway's fine capital city, Christiania 39 

7 Old Viking ship — explorer of northern seas and burial 

boat of Norse chief, Christiania 40 

8 The Royal Palace, Christiania 43 

9 The great ball-room at the Palace, Christiania 44 

10 Henrik Ibsen, the dramatic poet to whom all the 

world pays homage, in his home at Christiania 45 

11 The old Church of Gol, a quaint I2th century church 

reconstructed in the royal park at Oscarshal 45 

12 The Oscarshal Royal Gardens and Christiania, from 

the Chateau 48 

13 The old fortress at Fredrikshald 49 



4 CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

14 Village church and homes of Kongsberg, beside the 

bridge-spanned rapids of Laagen 51 

15 Victoria Hotel, adorned with reindeer antlers — at 

Kongsberg 53 

16 Country girls in haying time — outlook over Bolkes- 

j6 and Folsjo to Himingen mountains 54 

17 Waiting for passengers on the road near Bolkesjo — 

peak of Mt. Gausta over height at left 57 

18 When the lake steamer calls at Tinoset pier — out- 

look across the rippling Tins jo to the hills 60 

19 Snowy rock-ribbed heights of Mt. Gausta (6,180 ft.) 

towering over quiet homes in the Maan Valley 61 

20 Imposing beauty of spray-enshrouded Rjukan Fos, 

the "foaming fall," in the 800-foot leap 63 

21 Terrific splendor of the mighty Rjukan Fos, where it 

begins its 800-foot drop 65 

22 Rainbow in the spray of the Rjukan Fos, the "foam- 

ing fall," spanning the terrific mountain gorge .... 66 

23 Many-gabled timber church with curious I2th century 

arcade and turrets, Hitterdal 68 

24 Steamboat climbing a steep hill beside the Vrang 

waterfall, by locks in Bandak-Nordsjo Canal 72 

25 On the picturesque Telemarken road — changing 

horses at Grundesbro skyds station 74 

26 Halt of a stolkjaerre on Telemarken road beside the 

foaming Little Rjukan Falls 77 

27 Gossip at a wayside inn at Botten overlooking Voxli 

Lake — ^view towards the Haukeli mountains 79 

28 Digging a road through the deep July snow drifts up- 

on Dyreskard Pass (3,715 ft.) 82 



CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

29 Looking through a great snow .tunnel on a midsum- 

mer journey over Dyreskard Pass (3,715 ft.) 83 

30 Pretty Norwegian girls tending cows and goats on 

the Haukeli mountains (Midtlaeger saeter) 84 

31 Great zigzag loops of road descending from Dyres- 

kard Pass — west to mountain-walled Roldals Lake 87 

32 A farmer's family making hay in a sunny field be- 

tween the mountains, Roldal 89 

33 Pretty mountain-walled village and lake of Roldal . . 91 

34 Old log houses, down in the Bratlandsdal, with trees 

growing on their sod-covered roofs 95 

35 The wonderful Bratlandsdal road, blasted through 

mountain walls of solid rock 98 

36 Travelers on mountain road through the wild ravine 

of Seljestad, N. W. to snowy Folgefond 100 

37 Espelands Fos, one of the loveliest waterfalls in all 

Scandinavia — a gem in the super-best setting .... 101 

38 Skars Fos and Lote Fos leaping over the rocks to 

the meeting place of their waters 102 

39 Village roofs and sunny fields of Odde, north up the 

narrow mountain-walled Sorfjord 103 

40 Families and neighbors on a summer Sunday morn- 

ing before the village church at Odde 106 

41 Leaving Odde for an excursion down the picturesque 

mountain-walled Sorfjord, looking north 109 

42 A humble mountain home at the foot of the cliffs 

where the imposing Skjaeggedals Fos leaps 525 
feet 113 

43 Narrow rock-shelf where the road to Vorings Fos 

creeps past Lake Oifjord's deep waters 116 



6 CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

44 The seething waters of the mighty Vorings Fos, one 

of the largest water-falls of Norway 117 

45 Herd of reindeer, hardy creatures of the northern 

wilds, and snowy heights of Hardanger Glacier .. 119 

46 Flood from a melting glacier — where Rembesdals Fos 

comes over a towering precipice 122 

47 Stream of solid ice (Hardanger Glacier) and lake 

(Rembesdalsvand) formed where it melts 123 

48 Bergen, west from the Floifjeld, over the harbor 

(right) and Puddefjord (distant) 125 

49 In the great market place of busy Bergen, from the 

flower market N. to the fish market 130 

50 The harbor, N. W. from the market place in Bergen, 

the greatest fish market of Norway 132 

51 Warehouses along the quay in the old town of Ber- 

gen, for centuries the great fish-mart of Norway.. 134 

52 Sternly picturesque old fortress (Bergenhus) seen 

from a square in modern town, Bergen 138 

53 Children at play in a farmer's field before terraced 

Tvinde water-fall, near Vossevangen 143 

54 A log-built mill and a water-wheel grindstone, on 

Stalheim's river, Naerodal 145 

55 Stalheim's Hotel, and its superb view, through the 

famous Naerodal 147 

56 The zigzag mountain road up to Stalheim's Hotel, on a 

cliff above the Naerodal 150 

57 The SeAde Fos— dashing and splashing— near Stal- 

heim's Hotel, in the Naerodal 152 

58 Rocky Jordalsnut (3,620 ft.) from beside the road 

filled with tourists' carts 152 

59 Gudvangen's outlook over the Naerofjord, where 

the sea reaches far in among the mountains 154 



CONTENTS 7 

PAGE. 

60 Where the road creeps under the jutting cliffs by the 

waters of the Naerofjord 157 

61 Looking down the deep, still Naerofjord, from near 

Gudvangen 159 

62 Looking across Essefjord from Tjugum to mountain- 
side homes below ice-covered Kjeipen 160 

63 Fisherman arranging salmon nets at Balestrand on 

the Sognefjord — Balholm in distance 163 

64 Young farmers of the Nordfjord country before their 

turf-roofed cottage home 166 

65 A farmer's water-power grindstone and sod-roofed 

gristmill in the deep Olden Valley 169 

66 Harvesting barley on Mindresunde farm in the val- 

ley near Olden 170 

67 Grytereids Glacier glittering above drifting clouds, 

seen across placid Lake Olden 174 

68 Farmhouses of Yri, nestled at the mountain's base — 

Yri Fos pouring down from the glacier 175 

69 On sombre Lake Olden, lying deep between cloud- 

covered mountains, to Maelkevolds Glacier 177 

70 Rustoi Fos, as it seems to come out of the sky, above 

Rustoifj eld's rugged heights 178 

71 A Nordfjord bride and groom with guests and par- 

ents at their house door, Brigsdal 180 

72 Perilous Brigsdal Glacier, one of the grandest in all 

Norway 183 

73 Cavernous mouth of huge Brigsdal Glacier where its 

melting ice forms mountain torrents 186 

74 Among mountains and chasms of ice — enormous 

crevasses of Brigsdal Glacier 186 

75 Mountain-walled Loen Lake — unrivalled in beauty 

and grandeur— from Steten farm 188 



5 CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

76 Lake Loen — fed by glaciers on its cloud-capped 

mountain shores 190 

77 Tourists crossing rippling Lake Loen — view across 

to a huge glacier between the heights 192 

78 Utigards Fos, leaping 2,000 feet from Ravnefjeld 

Glacier into Lake Loen — seen from Naesdal 192 

79 Hogrenning farm, nestling at the mountain's base, on 

the east shore of Lake Loen 194 

80 Looking from Hjelle across quiet Stryns Lake to 

the steeps and glaciers of Mt. Skaala 195 

81 From the mountain inn at Vide saeter down .the Vide 

valley — Mt. Skaala in right distance 197 

82 A Lapp family and sledge-dog — outside their summer 

home on a hillside in Norway 199 

83 Zigzag steeps of Grjotlid road to Marok — 10 miles 

travel for 3^ miles straight distance 203 

84 Haying on a mountain shelf high above Marok vil- 

lage and mirror-clear Geirangerfjord 204 

85 Zigzags of the famous Grjotlid road — ^mountain milk- 

maids beside the way near Marok 206 

86 Marok and the giant heights behind it, S. S. E. 

from steamship on Geirangerfjord 208 

87 Restoring a burned city— Aalesund, an island port, 

and important cod-fish market 210 

88 Receiving fish from sea vessels, and packing for ex- 

port — in a fish warehouse at Aalesund 213 

89 The sharp pinnacles of the Romsdalshorn crowning 

the mountain wall above Rauma river 214 

90 Ragged range of the Troldtinder or Witch Pinnacles 

(5,055 ft.) from valley road, Horgheim 217 

91 Trondhjem, its homes, warehouses and cathedral, 

between river Nid and the fjord 218 



CONTENTS 9 

PAGE. 

92 Trondjem cathedral, whose traditions reach back 

eight centuries — grandest church in Norway 222 

93 Landing from a steamer in an Arctic country, Svol- 

vaer, Lofoten Islands 225 

94 Picturesque Svolvaer, a far north fishing station, 

Lofoten Islands 227 

95 Buying fish in a busy Arctic trading port, Tromso. . 229 

96 People of the frigid North — Lapp home and family, 

in the Tromsdal, near Tromso 231 

97 En route to North Cape — skirting precipitous cliffs 

and narrow straits of Lyngenfjord 233 

98 Hammerfest, the world's northermost town 234 

99 North Cape from the west, land of the Midnight Sun 237 

100 The Midnight Sun in July over cliffs of Spitzbergen 

and Arctic Ocean, 78° 15' N. latitude 239 

What Norway has done for the world 242 

Norway's Sovereigns 256 

What Norway is today 

The land and the sky 271 

The people 278 

The Lapps 286 

Education 289 

Religion 293 

Transportation and Communica.tion 301 

Government and Defense 306 

Occupations and Incomes 311 

Amusements 315 

Language and Literature 319 

Books to read 351 

Pronunciation of Norwegian names and phrases 360 



lO CONTENTS 

MAPS 

1 Norway in relation to Europe as a whole. 

2 Southern Norway. 

3 Christiania. 

4 Telemarken. 

5 Hardanger. 

6 The Sognefjord district. 

7 The Nordfjord district. 



INTRODUCTION 

I am gratified to have an opportunity of saying a 
word of commendation for this admirable book on 
Norway Through the Stereoscope and the pictures of 
which the book is primarily an exposition. I am 
pleased to find the book much more than an explana- 
tion of the stereographs. It gives, in a series of extra 
chapters, much interesting and reliable information 
that will be a source of satisfaction to Norwegians, 
and of inspiration to many an American, not only to 
visit Norway, but also to delve a little deeper into 
Norwegian history and literature than the actual tour- 
ist has the means of doing. For in this remarkable 
hand-book he will find garnered from a thousand 
sources apt and illuminating facts on the varied phases 
of Norwegian life, both ancient and modern. The 
chapter on "What has Norway for the Traveler?" 
luminously sets forth the characteristic features of 
Norwegian scenery and natural phenomena; the 
chapters on "What Norway has Done for the World" 
and "The People" may prove somewhat startling, even 
to many Norwegians, but I am convinced that these 
chapters contain nothing that has not either historical 
or scientific sanction. No man can ponder on the his- 
tory of the Norsemen, ancient or modern, without be- 
coming enthusiastic over their intellectual achieve- 
ments and historical significance. 



12 INTRODUCTION 

I cannot but feel that the various chapters of this 
book will do much toward giving Norway, in the 
minds of Americans, a deservedly high rank as an 
extremely interesting country, not only on account of 
her picturesque fjords, snow-capped mountains, and 
magnificent water-falls, but on account of the political 
alertness and intellectual virility that her people have 
displayed, and the consequent contribution that they 
have made to the world's progress. 

As Norway is the land of my birth, I am particu- 
larly proud of these things, and I will be glad if these 
fine pictures and this excellent book shall be widely 
disseminated in this country. 

I left Norway as a boy, and hence had but a hazy 
conception of the grandeur of Norwegian scenery until 
1 visited the country a few years ago (in 1899). I 
was profoundly impressed, and I have been delighted 
to refresh my mind by viewing through the stereo- 
scope many of the rugged and majestic scenes that I 
witnessed on my visit. 

It is the ambition of every Norwegian in this coun- 
try to visit the land of his birth ; and if he be of Nor- 
wegian ancestry, he has a peculiarly strong desire to 
see the land of his fathers. Thousands make the long 
journey every year. But other thousands find it im- 
possible for one reason or another to make the trip 
except in their dreams. The Underwood stereographs 
and the incomparable maps that accompany them offer 
a most excellent substitute. At comparatively trifling 
expense a trip may be made to Norway through these 



INTRODUCTION 13 

stereographs that will give something of the grand 
reality of an actual visit. 

I almost envy the youth of to-day the many intel- 
lectual aids that are at their disposal for historical 
and geographical, and even literary study. I think 
that I can imagine what a keen delight it would have 
been to me as a boy to have had access to the Under- 
wood Travel System — to see foreign lands as thou- 
sands of school boys now may see them through this 
travel system. And to have viewed such scenes of 
my native land as these pictures present would have 
been joy unbounded. 

I wish to express my great satisfaction that Norway 
has been included in this unique travel system. I hope 
that the venture will prove a source of artistic enjoy- 
ment and intellectual stimulus to thousands of my 
Norwegian kinsmen in this country, and to others as 
well. 

Knute Nelson. 
United States Senate, 

January 30, 1907. 



What Has Norway for the Traveler? 

If he be of Norwegian birth, her charm needs little 
exposition. She is the mother-land, the background 
of all his early memories. Her earth and sea and sky- 
in themselves have an indefinable, indestructible hold 
on his affections. 

But what of the vast majority, who are not Nor- 
wegian-born? Why should they make any special 
effort to know Norway? 

a. In the first place, it is a land of magnificent 
natural beauty. No country on earth can surpass the 
superb dignity of its majestic mountains, their feet set 
in the deep, still waters of winding fj-ords and their 
snow-capped heads among the drifting clouds. No 
land on the globe has such marvelous wealth of water- 
falls. Nowhere in the world can one see more pictur- 
esque valleys, where nature seems to frown and smile 
both at once, so closely associated are the idyllic and 
the terrible. To see Norway is to enlarge our con- 
ception of the glory of "this goodly frame the earth," 
and 

"The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the 

hills and the plains, 
Are not these, O, soul, the vision of Him who 

reigns ?" 

h. It is a land to which every living person of 
European descent to-day owes a positive debt. This 
rugged northland has produced epoch-making men. 
The history of the civilization of Europe, and conse- 
quently of America, has been enormously influenced 



WHAT HAS N UK WAY FOR THE TRAVELER? 15 

in its form and character by the vigor and practical 
energy of Norse colonists, who went out from the 
home-land something like a thousand years ago. To 
see that home-land means more lively appreciation of 
our inheritance to-day from those old benefactors and 
ancestors of ours. 

c. It is a land where one can to-day see with his 
own eyes stupendous physical processes of world- 
shaping, still going on — see the compacting of accumu- 
lated snows into glacial ice; the slow descent of the 
ice-sheets as the lower edges melt; the action of ice 
and of running water, disintegrating solid rock and 
breaking it up into gravel, on which plant-life can 
feed — a sort of condensed version of age-long chapters 
in the geologic history of our earth as a whole. 

In this one small kingdom the traveler can observe 
for himself the effect of high elevation and high lati- 
tude upon vegetation, thus getting a more vivid notion 
of what those conditions practically mean than he 
could obtain from long reading about the same kinds 
of facts. Such deepened realization of the long, slow 
processes through which the earth goes in preparation 
for supporting life, and of the varying conditions 
under which life is led, inevitably quickens one's sense 
of the significance of life itself. It makes living mean 
more, when one thinks how much has to be done just 
to get the world ready for it. 

d. It is on the shores of Norway, or on the Arctic 
waters north of Norway, that travelers get their only 
practicable opportunity to peer over the northern rim 
of the earth, and look at the sun at midnight. No 
other experience can possibly equal this in giving one 
an experimental sense of certain astronomical facts. 
We all learned the facts after a fashion, in our school 
days, but under ordinary circumstances they never 



16 WHAT HAS NORWAY FOR THE TRAVELER? 

seem quite real. Seeing Norway thus branches out 
so far that we really almost see the solar system! 

e. Norway's literature is exceptionally strong and 
admirable in its own special lines, and its influence is 
conspicuously traceable in that of many other lands. 
The Sagas and Eddas are among the most famous of 
all mediaeval stories and poems; they have furnished 
ideas for later poets and story-tellers innumerable. 
It is immensely worth while to know the country that 
nurtured the race from which those old masterpieces 
of heroic adventure and splendid poetic imagination 
sprang. We appreciate and enjoy the literature vastly 
better when we have some accurate, definite knowledge 
of the sort of surroundings that helped produce it. 

Besides, it is Norway that produced the author 
whom many critics place at the head of Europe's 
creative literature during the nineteenth century — 
Henrik Ibsen. Nearly all his most famous works are 
based on studies from Norse life and character in 
varied lights and shades. It is consequently worth 
while to see the land, and something of the everyday 
life, of the same kinds of people that Ibsen represents 
in his dramas. It is true, Ibsen's works have a uni- 
versal character — they are vastly more than pictures 
of any one nation's ideals and failures, sins and strug- 
gles, hopes and victories; nevertheless the local color 
of his world-famous plays and poems is Norwegian, 
and one cannot enter completely into their spirit with- 
out knowing their country. 

/. Norway has made brilliant contributions to the 
world of music. One of the most widely known and loved 
masters of the violin was a Norwegian — Ole Bull. 
One of the greatest and most popular composers of the 
nineteenth century is Edvard Grieg, also a Nor- 
wegian. The land that could produce such genius as 



WHAT HAS NORWAY FOR THE TRAVELER? 17 

theirs has charm for their admirers. Perhaps the sight 
of the wind-swept heights and the roaring cataract, 
soughing birch, and lapping wave, may suggest some 
clue to the weird melodies of these Northern masters. 

g. Norway is a particularly . interesting field for 
study by one who cares to watch the social develop- 
ment of democratic ideals and principles. A European 
country that has deliberately abolished its orders of 
nobility, a land where shrewd, well-educated peasant 
land-owners control legislation, a land where personal 
independence of speech and action is guarded with 
jealous zeal, yet where popular suffrage calls for an 
hereditary sovereign as chief executive — such a land 
offers unique conditions for study and speculation. 

A clever European traveler once observed: ''Some 
people think that universal suffrage makes Switzer- 
land free, but universal up and down hill has more 
to do with it." When one sees the abrupt, precipitous, 
cut-off-and-shut-away sections of country in which 
Norwegian people have lived, generation after genera- 
tion, it is easy to understand how the feeling of Nor- 
wegian independence is bred in the bone. When one 
sees at what immense expenditure of personal toil 
every bit of material ease and comfort must be wrung 
from scanty soil or wrested from covetous seas, it be- 
comes easy to understand that no great amount of 
glitter and gold lace at court can ever seem to the 
sturdy Norwegian farmer worth what it costs. 

And yet, when the splendid old-time history of the 
land is recalled among the scenes of its happening, a 
sympathetic on-looker must appreciate that loyalty 
to old traditions which still demands a king — a leader 
set apart from birth for the duties of leadership. The 
observer will do some new thinking, some fresh com- 
paring of these conditions with his own home con- 



18 WHAT HAS NORWAY FOR THE TRAVELER? 

ditions. Whatever may be his final conviction in 
matters of national politics, the traveler will at least 
better understand the Norwegian theory of a king — 
a sovereign who, while in absolute accord with twen- 
tieth century ideals of popular constitutional govern- 
ment, will embody in himself a complementary ideal, 
and, freed by his position from the hampering re- 
strictions of dependence on electoral favor, will con- 
secrate the energies of his vigorous manhood to the 
task of helping to work out the destiny of the nation. 



The Stereograpbs^How to Use Them 

These stereographs are not mere "pictures" of 
Norway. They are much more than that. The two 
prints mounted side by side are not alike, though 
they seem alike to the unaided eye. They were made 
from two different negatives, which in turn had been 
produced by two different lenses, though their ex- 
posure was made at the same instant. The two lenses 
were set side by side in a binocular or ''stereoscopic" 
camera, i. e., a camera whose lenses act like the two 
eyes of a human observer. The ordinary camera 
works only as a one-eyed man would see. 

But a man's two eyes give him knowledge far 
beyond what he could get from one eye alone. There 
is good reason why Nature should equip him with two 
eyes rather than one, though he is seldom conscious 
of the reason. 

Experiment for yourself to see the difference be- 
tween the reports given by your right eye and by 
your left eye. Hold your right arm out straight be- 
fore you at full length, the open palm toward the left. 
Close your left eye and look with the right eye alone. 
You see the edge of the hand and a little of the back 
of the hand. 

Keep the arm in exactly the same position. Close 
the right eye and look only with the left eye. You 
see now the edge of the hand and a little of the palm, 
but not the back. 

Look with both eyes at once. You see now the 
edge of the hand, a part of the back and at the same 
time a part of the palm — in fact, you see part way 



20 THE STEREOGRAPHS — HOW TO USE THEM 

around the hand. Your eyes tell you that the hand is 
a solid, substantial thing, with length and width and 
thickness, all three. 

The two eyes make up a combined report in this 
same manner whenever you look at any soUd object 
within reasonably near range. A one-eyed person 
gets only a partial report, because he cannot see 
around things in this way. His sense of solidity and 
distance can come only through experience and judg- 
ment. He gradually learns, of course, to infer that 
a thing is solid and reaches back into space, as he 
notices the way in which light and shade appear on 
its surface, or the way in which farther parts look 
smaller than nearer parts. But the two-eyed man can 
likewise do all this, so his own capacity for correct 
seeing must always be immensely greater than that 
of a person with a single eye. 

Now see how this principle of two-eye vision works 
through a stereograph. Take, for instance, the 85th 
position in this Norway tour (using Stereograph 684 
— "Zigzags of the famous Grjotlid road; mountain 
milkmaids on the way near Marok"). First cover up 
one-half the card and look at the other half without 
the stereoscope, just as you would do with any 
ordinary photograph made with a tourist's kodak. Of 
course, you know the zigzag road must be a con- 
siderable distance away, because it looks so small, and 
you know the sod-covered farm buildings must be 
considerably lower than our own standpoint, because 
we see so much of their roofs. It seems as if we 
probably got a pretty accurate idea of the place from 
the report of a one-eyed camera. 

But now just put the stereograph in the stereo- 
scope rack, and, looking through the lenses, see the 
same place as if you were standing bodily where the 



THE STEREOGRArHS HOW TO USE THEM 21 

binocular camera stood and using two eyes instead 
of only one . . . ! 

Our instinct is to draw back hastily from the dizzy 
edge of the cliff on which we find ourselves perched ! 
We can actually see the big empty space between us 
and that ragged, rocky mountain-side. It seems as 
if we might easily pick up one of the small stones 
underfoot and fling it straight out into the airy gulf 
before us. The difference between seeing with one 
eye and seeing with two eyes needs no further 
exposition. 

The fact that the girls with the milk pails, small as 
their photographed images are on the card, should 
seem to stand out life-size when viewed through the 
stereoscope, is perhaps surprising until one thinks 
carefully about what the case involves. Everybody 
has noticed that the farther away a person is the 
smaller his form appears. Shut one eye and hold a 
silver half-dollar six or eight inches away in front of 
the other eye, while you try to watch a full-grown 
man walking down the street, fifty feet away, outside 
your window. You will find the small disk of the 
half-dollar can hide him completely, i. e., that an 
object only an inch and a half high, six or eight 
inches from your eye, fills the same angle of vision 
as an adult man fifty feet away. Now, since we prac- 
ti-cally look through the stereograph as if through a 
ivindow, the effect of its lenses is to translate those 
inch-and-a-half images of the milk girls on the card 
a few inches away, into the full-size figures of the 
real, live girls several feet away, across the road. 

Of course, it is not promised that seeing Norway 
through stereographs can be a complete equivalent 
for the actual journey. It is through the sense of 
sight alone that we are to get our experiences of the 



22 THE STEREOGRAPHS — HOW TO USE THEM 

land and the people. But, as has been remarked by a 
writer on experimental optics : 

"Our sense of location is determined, in nearly 
all cases, not from what we hear or feel, but 
from what we see. When we look at ordinary 
photographs — in our hands, or on a wall — we 
always see the book or frame or part of the room 
about us as well as the pictured scene, and con- 
sequently we continue to have a distinct sense of 
our location in the place where the picture is. In 
using the stereoscope, however, the hood about 
our eyes shuts our room away from us, shuts out 
the America or England that may be about us 
and shuts us in with the city or the people stand- 
ing out beyond the stereoscopic card." 
But the experience of seeing other places just as 
if we were there can be thoroughly sensible and satis- 
factory only when we know just where "there" is. 
The special maps* accompanying this guidebook tell 
where we are each time we take a new standpoint for 
observation. Notice that every position in the whole 
tour is located on one or more of the maps, plainly 
marked in red with a number corresponding to the 
number given in parenthesis on the stereograph mount. 
The apex, or point from which two red lines branch, 
is the spot where we stand. We look in each case over 
or through the space included between the branching 
red lines. Where one of the diverging lines is shorter 
than the other, that indicates that we shall not see 
quite so far on that side of our field of vision as we 
see at the other side. A very little experimental use 
of the maps will make their idea perfectly clear. Be 
sure to refer to the proper map, according to instruc- 
tions, each time, before you begin to look at the place 
itself ; then you can look with definite, accurate knowl- 



* Patented in the U. S., England and various foreign coiintries. 



THE STEREOGRAPHS — HOW TO USE THEM 23 

edge exactly where you are, what is around you and 
what lies before you, and the satisfaction and pleasure', 
of the experience will be immensely increased. The' 
very slight trouble involved in consulting the maps 
will be found repaid many times over by the help it 
gives in making one feel himself to be "on the spot." 

If, then, through the right use of the special maps, 
we know the exact location of the particular spot 
where we stand and know exactly the direction in 
which we look and the distance to which we can see, 
we may certainly have a distinct sense or experience 
of being there in person. 

That we do actually gain that experience is prac- 
tically proven by the fact that, ever afterwards, when 
one of the scenes thus known is called to mind, we 
go back in memory to the place itself — not at all to 
the room in America or in England where we had 
used the maps, stereoscope, and stereographs. 

Of course, the "travel experiences" which are made 
possible by such use of maps, stereoscope and stereo- 
graphs have limitations as compared with those of an 
actual journey. One has no sense of muscular exer- 
tion in moving about; the air he breathes is un- 
changed ; the people he sees do not speak ; the element 
of color is only suggested — ^not made visible — in the 
landscape. The feeling of "being there" may last 
only a few moments at a time. One's feelings may not 
be quite so keen as they would be if he stood bodily 
in the distant land. Nevertheless, this sort of "travel 
experience" is, so far as it goes, absolutely genuine, 
differing not in kind but only in degree from that of 
the actual tourist. 

James Henry Breasted, Professor of Egyptology 
and Oriental History in the University of Chicago, 



24 THE STEREOGRAPHS HOW TO USE THEM 

says in the preface to his volume on Egypt Through 

the Stereoscope: 

"It was with peculiar satisfaction that I made 
the acquaintance of your system of 'stay-at-home 
travel' among the people of the East. By its use 
an acquaintance can be gained, here at home, with 
the wonders of the Nile Valley, which is quite 
comparable with that obtained by traveling 
there. In my judgment, there is no other existent 
means by which this result can be accomplished. 
The map system, simple, ingenious and peda- 
gogically sound, first furnishes a clear idea of 
locality in every case, and with this in mind your 
superb stereograph furnishes the traveler, while 
sitting in his own room, a vivid prospect as 
through an open window, looking out upon scene 
after scene, from one hundred carefully selected 
. points of view along the Nile. . . . The joys 
of travel are thus extended to that large class of 
people who thirst for an acquaintance with the 
distant lands of other ages, but are prevented by 
the expense involved or by the responsibilities of 
home, business or profession. To all such I most 
heartily commend your tours through foreign 
lands of the ancient world, and I can confidently 
assure them in these tours they will find a source 
of untold pleasure and instruction, immensely 
widening the horizon of daily life, and more truly 
making the user a 'citizen of the world' than he 
can ever hope to be without actually visiting 
these distant lands." 



Instructions 

1. Experiment with the sliding rack which holds the 

stereograph until you find the distance which 
best suits the focus of your own eyes. This 
distance varies greatly with different people. 

2. Have a strong, steady light on the stereograph. 

Take care that the face of it is not in shadow. 
It is a good plan to sit with the back toward 
the window or lamp, letting the light fall over 
one shoulder directly on the face of the stereo- 
graph. 

3. Hold the stereograph with the hood close against 

the forehead and temples, shutting off entirely 
all immediate surroundings. The less you are 
conscious of things close about you, the more 
strong will be your feeling of actual presence 
in the scenes you are studying. 

4. Think definitely, while you have your face in the 

hood, just where your position is, as learned 
from the maps and explanatory text. Recall 
your surroundings to mind — i. e., think what is 
behind you; what Hes off at the right; at the 
left. You will find yourself richly repaid for 
the effort by the fuller "real"-ness of each 
outlook. 

5. Do not hurry. Take plenty of time to see what 

is before you. Notice all the little details — 
or, rather, notice as many as you can each time ; 
you will be surprised to find, the next time you 
look at the same place, how many things you 
had failed to notice at first. 



SEEING NORWAY 

Out of Norway in old times came vigorous, fearless, 
powerful men, whose virile energy helped shape the 
civilization of Europe and America. Out of Norway 
at this present time flows a steady stream of the best 
type of emigrants — men and women with the strength 
of the rock-ribbed hills in their bodies and the light 
of intelligent ambition in their eyes. What we are 
to do is to see for ourselves the country that gave 
them birth, the Land of the Vikings, in its magnifi- 
cent beauty, and we are to study for ourselves the 
everyday life of the men and women who remain in 
Norway and have made it what it is to-day. 

The present tour, like nearly all Norwegian tours 
made by foreigners, intentionally gives special empha- 
sis to such aspects of nature and life as are least like 
the nature and life of America and England, because 
contrast makes a traveler's impressions most vivid. 
He is far more interested in the novel than in the 
familiar. And yet, he would get a wofully incom- 
plete, one-sided notion of Norway if he failed to un- 
derstand that the country includes (especially along 
the southern coast and up in the long eastern val- 
leys) many good farms conducted according to up-to- 
date methods, and busy factory towns, where pre- 
cisely the same social and industrial movements that 
shape the life of English-speaking communities are 
being successfully worked out in a Norse environ- 
ment. But a traveler in a foreign land does not 
usually care to look at things which he might see 
any day at home, particularly if those famiHar things 

Position 1. 



28 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

are commonplace to the eye. He has a right to choose 
the path of the picturesque, so long as his delight in 
natural beauty and in primitive quaintness does not 
betray him into taking an unjustifiable attitude of 
patronage toward the nation he half understands. 

The chapters appended to this Journey (pages 242- 
359), are intended to suggest, though briefly, cer- 
tain aspects of Norse life that are touched either in- 
completely or not at all in the course of the journey 
itself. 

Map 2 shows by means of a long, irregular red 
line the general course of our proposed route. It be- 
gins at Christiania in the southeastern part of the 
kingdom, makes a detour to Frederikshald on the 
southeastern frontier, then proceeds westward to 
Telemarken, where a red oblong set off on the map 
indicates that a special enlarged map of the district 
has been prepared for local reference. Districts 
around Hardanger fjord, Sognefjord and Nordfjord 
are to be visited with the help of local maps ; then the 
red route line continues along the irregular coast to 
Aalesund, reaches up into Romsdal, and touches 
Trondhjem. The far-northern sights of our tour are 
indicated on Map 1 about the Lofoten Islands, 
Tromso, Hammerfest and the North Cape, our last 
outlook being from a bay off Spitzbergen, straight 
toward the Pole. 

Now to begin our sight-seeing. 

The official center of the realm is at the same time 
the actual center of industrial and commercial activity ; 
it is, moreover, the first large town which a traveler 
reaches when visiting Norway by the most frequented 
routes. Our opening sight of the land is therefore to 



Position 1. Map 2. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 29 

be an outlook over the capital city, Christiania. Be- 
fore taking our position, however, let us have in mind 
exactly where we are to stand. Open Map 1 and find 
Christiania in the southeastern part of the kingdom. 
Notice that it is much farther, north than Great 
Britain — indeed in nearly the same latitude as south- 
ern Greenland, the Shetland Islands, St. Petersburg 
and northern Kamschatka. Observe also how the 
North Sea lies between Norway, Denmark, the Nether- 
lands and Great Britain. The distance across from 
London or Newcastle to Christiania is nowadays cov- 
ered by a steamship in sixty hours ; in old times, when 
the sole dependence was on sails and oars, the separa- 
tion was practically much greater. 

Turn again to Map 2, showing southern Norway 
only. Here we have a good chance to observe the 
extraordinary fashion in which the Norwegian sea- 
coast is rent by great, ragged fjords and fringed with 
innumerable fragments in the form of islands. Notice 
that Christiania Fjord reaches up into the land quite 
near the Swedish frontier. It is a voyage of seventy 
miles or more that a steamship has to make, after 
entering the fjord, before it lands its passengers at 
one of the Christiania quays. Our first sight of the 
land and the sky will be from a high hill just east 
of the city proper. 

, The red oblong drawn around the city indicates 
again that we shall find that portion of our map given 
separately, on a still larger scale. Let us turn to 
Map 3 in order to know more definitely the "lay of 
the land." The spot where we are to stand is marked 
near the lower right corner of the city map with a 
figure 1 in red. Those two red lines diverging from 
the encircled 1 mean that we are to look in the direc- 
tion in which they extend, i. e., toward the north- 
Position 1. Maps 1, 2, 3. 



30 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

west. We are to see the district which is included 
between them. Let us ascertain what the map 
promises : 

Position — On the Ekeberg, a hill southeast of the 
town, across the harbor. Direction — Northwest. 
Surroundings — Wooded hills. Outlook — The harbor 
waters must be just below the hill, then a portion of 
the town, then another part of the harbor and a hilly 
peninsula beyond. The extension of the red lines into 
the margin of the map means that we are to see even 
farther than the map shows. Notice that they include 
a large building (the palace) on a hill in the middle of 
the town; it is close to one of the diverging lines— 
that means it will be seen very near the extreme right- 
hand limits of our field of vision. 

Now we are ready to take 

Position I. Cbristiania and her hnsy harbor north- 
west from the J^keberg, Royal Palace at right 

Here we are on the hillside, looking northwest. The 
Swedish frontier is forty miles distant behind us. 
How steeply the ground slopes away beneath those 
pine trees, down toward the harbor-side! It is all 
exactly as the map led us to expect. This is near the 
head of the fjord; we know thos^ waters reach off 
toward the south (left) to open into the Skagerrak. 
There is the town beyond. The royal palace, sur- 
rounded by its park shows near the extreme northern 
(right-hand) limits of our view; those dark masses 
of trees at the south of the building are in the park. 
The district between the palace and the harbor is, as 
we might infer, devoted largely to business — we shall 
presently go down into that part of Christiania to 
see the chief shopping district and the largest market 
(Positions 3-6). We shall also visit a pier over at the 

Position 1. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STERP^OSCOPE 31 

farther side of the harbor to watch the departure 
of an ocean steamship with her out-going passengers 
(Position 2). 

Do you wonder that there should be so many trees 
in that district straight ahead of us, beyond the har- 
bor ? The map shows a big parade-ground over there 
with trees around it and a grove adjoining it at the 
south. Athletic contests are sometimes held there, 
calling together thousands of spectators. Do you see 
just at the right of a projecting branch of this nearest 
pine tree a big stone building, with bright sunshine 
gleaming on its southern wall and a pointed tower 
showing beyond the ridge of its roof? That is 
Akershus, a famous old fortress, which successfully 
withstood four different sieges by Swedish and Danish 
enemies in years long ago. The celebrated Charles XII 
of Sweden in 1716 led the last attack on the fortress. 
At the present time it is used only as an arsenal and 
a prison — the modern defences of the town are 
located farther down the fjord, i. e., off at our left. 

The districts beyond (northwest of) Akershus are 
chiefly given to residence streets; nearly a quarter of 
a million people have homes here, and other residence 
districts cover a large area at the north and northeast 
(right). 

Look away over on that distant hill at the left, just 
below the uppermost of the pine branches before us, 
and you will see the white walls of Oscarshal, a royal 
villa west of the town. We shall by and by go over 
there (Position 12) and look back over the town. 

If we could stay on this spot and watch the chang- 
ing skies through a day in late June, we should find 
the sun setting after 9 P. M. beyond those hills at the 
extreme right, and it sinks so little below the horizon 
that up here on this height we could easily read at 

Position 1. Map 3. 



'^32 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

midnight. It rises again in the northeast between 
2 and 3 A. M., giving a day of nineteen hours. 
On the Other hand, mid-winter brings a day of only 
about five hours — the consequence of the high latitude. 
In Ballou's volume of travels called Due North the 
author speaks of standing on this very spot where 
we are now: 

''While enjoying a birdseye view of Christiania 
from the heights of Ekeberg, a well-wooded hill 
four hundred feet in height, in the southern 
suburb, it was difficult to believe oneself in the 
. . . precise latitude of the Shetland Islands. 
A drowsy hum like the drone of bees seemed to 
float up from the busy city below. The beauti- 
ful fjord with its graceful promontories, its pic- 
turesque and leafy isles, might be Lake Maggiore 
or Como, so placid and calm is its pale blue 
surface." 
If we are ready to begin seeing the people and the 
place at closer range, let us consult Map 3 once more 
to get our bearings accurately. Our second position 
is marked in red in the same manner as our first, 
with lines diverging from our standpoint near the head 
of the harbor to show in what direction we are to look 
and how far we are to see. 

Position a, I,eaving old home and friends— Waving 
good-bye to emigrants starting for America 

Direction — South. Surroundings — The city streets 
reach off behind us and at our right. 

We catch just a glimpse of one of the business 
streets through the shed at our right. 

After that outgoing vessel gets fairly out into the 
channel she will turn a little more toward the south- 
west (right), and go all the afternoon steaming down 
among the capes and islands of the fjord. In forty- 



Position 2. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 33 

eight hours she will reach the English port of Hull 
and transfer passengers to an Atlantic liner for New 
York. It would take fifty-four hours to reach Ham- 
burg, sixty to either Amsterdam or London, eighty to 
Antwerp. For three months in the year the harbor 
waters here are frozen, though, curiously enough, 
some of the west coast harbors, hundreds of miles 
farther north, are kept open all the year round by the 
near flowing of warm ocean currents. 

More than 25,000 Norwegians have emigrated in a 
single year, nearly all bound for the western United 
States — some for the western provinces of Canada. 
The beginning of this great American emigration was 
made in 1825, when a party of neighbors sailed from 
Stavanger and settled in New York State. A few of 
the voyagers we see now may return to the old home 
after accumulating modest fortunes ; some will come 
back after a number of years just to revisit tem- 
porarily the scenes of their childhood; but most of 
them will never see these Norwegian hills again ex- 
cept in their dreams. They will, however, remember 
generously the relatives left behind — post-office sta- 
tistics show a million dollars coming back here in a 
single year from those who have gone to the other 
side of the world.* 

The famous story of The Pilot and His Wife, by 
the popular Norwegian author, Jonas Lie, locates the 
home of the young people at Arendal, farther south- 
west, down on the Skagerrak. It is a story well 
worth reading and can be found in English transla- 
tion. Probably a large proportion of these people on 
the pier know the story in the original version. 



* Notes in regard to occupations and incomes here at home will be found 
on page 311. 

Position 2. Map 3. 



34 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Now to see something of the town itself. Consult 
the map once more; see where it locates our third 
standpoint in the eastern part of the town not very 
far from the head of the harbor, and what it tells about 
our proposed view ; the branching red lines reach east- 
ward across an open square and some distance beyond. 

Position 3, The great market around statue of 
Christian IV—^ast to Church of Our Saviour 

Direction — We look a little south of east. Sur- 
roundings — The pier where we saw the ocean-liner is 
ahead of us and off at our right, but not in sight; 
city streets surround us on all sides. The palace, on 
its hill, is away off behind us. 

For over two hundred years the townsfolk have 
gathered here for the church service on Sundays and 
for trading on certain week-days. Twice a week at 
present these stalls are occupied. There are excellent 
farms and market gardens in the city suburbs, from 
which these vendors have brought in vegetables, 
poultry and eggs, butter and cheese — tHe usual variety 
of food-stuff supplies. Those big glass cases are for 
flowers — the townspeople buy a good many. Prices 
are low here, for incomes are much smaller than in 
the United States. Farmers like these may perhaps 
handle not more than $300 to $400 in a year, but they 
get a good living, subscribe to Christiania newspapers 
and bring up their children well. Even here in the 
capital city few householders are actually rich. A 
city family with an income of 10,000 kroner — (i. e., 
$2,700) is considered distinctly well off. Twenty or 
twenty-five thousand heads of families here in town 
are factory employes, earning small wages in the 
wood-pulp industry, in saw mills, breweries, woolen 
mills and match factories. The average housekeeper 

Position 3. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 35 

who comes here a-marketing needs to be a shrewd 
buyer, in order to make her funds provide family 
necessities. 

Over beyond the church and the house-roofs we can 
see a range of hills among which some of these very 
farmers live. The Ekeberg, from which we got our 
first sight of the town, is a little too far southward 
(right) for us to see from here now. The country 
beyond is just a succession of hills, valleys and lakes, 
more hills and more valleys and more lakes, extend- 
ing to the frontier of Sweden (some thirty miks 
away straight ahead), and indeed for miles and miles 
beyond in Sweden. It was when invaders came over 
here from Sweden in 1567, to capture the old town of 
King Harold Hard-ruler, that the people with a sort 
of heroic insolence set their own homes afire and de- 
liberately destroyed the whole town! That happened 
not exactly where we are now; the older town, Oslo, 
was a bit farther east on the other side of a small 
river. It was rebuilt and then, by accident, burned 
again in 1624, after which King Christian IV gave 
the place its third start on this ground where we are 
now. It is the monarch's statue that we see in the 
middle of the square among the market-stalls. The 
city itself still bears his name. 

Worship in that big church is according to Lutheran 
■Protestant forms. '^ This particular building was 
erected after the Reformation and so was never a 
center of the older Catholic faith. 

That restaurant on the north side of the square is 
a popular resort, the dishes served being practically 
about the same as in a middle-class restaurant in Ger- 
many or Denmark. Beer is the most popular beverage 



*_See page 293 for information about the State Church and the religious 
training of pastor and people. 

Position 3. Map 3. 



3'6 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

— there are in fact some good breweries here at 
Christiania. The apothecaries' signs on those two 
buildings may remind us that the most celebrated of 
modern Norwegians was once a clerk in just such a 
shop down in one of the southern provinces. Indeed, 
when Henrik Ibsen first came to Christiania it was 
with the idea of studying medicine. Many a time since 
those youthful days Ibsen walked about in this very 
square. We shall presently visit his home up near the 
royal palace (Position 10). 

But now let us visit that old church itself for a 
unique view of the market-crowd. Refer again to 
the same part of the map and notice how the lines 
indicate that we are to look back across the same 
square. 

Position 4» Christiania' s largest market 

Direction — We are looking obliquely downward 
from the church steeple, so it will be found most ef- 
fective to hold the stereoscope at such an angle that 
we look obliquely down on the face of the stereograph. 
Surroundings — Streets and house-roofs. 

Now we find the statue of King Christian faces us. 
That building on the farther side of the square, at 
the left, is one from whose window we have just 
been looking. The crowd below is not the same one 
that we saw before, though probably many individuals 
are the same. 

If we let our eyes rest first on one of these busy 
people, then on another and another, we shall find 
the effect is almost as if they themselves were shift- 
ing their positions and moving about while we watch 
from overhead! 



Position 4. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 37 

The money that is changing hands there around 
King Christian's pedestal consists mostly of silver 
and copper or bronze coins — kroner (crowns) worth 
twenty-seven cents each and ore which are hundredth 
parts of a krone. 

This is the largest market in all Norway, for Christ- 
iania is the country's one really big urban center. There 
are here over 227,000 people, and a large volume of 
business is transacted. Taking the country as a whole, 
30 per cent, of the people get their living as these 
farming folk do, out of the soil, though many thou- 
sands raise crops only sufficient for their own house- 
holds. 

It is a very democratic people we find here. Though 
popular feeling is in favor of a monarchical rather 
than a republican government, these citizens are keenly 
conscious of their political rights. In 1814 a free 
constitution was adopted, and in 1821 nobility was 
abolished. All the men of twenty-five and upward 
are qualified voters, choosing representatives to 
Parliament — indeed some of the members of Parlia- 
ment are themselves prosperous farmers, with a 
well-earned reputation for shrewd judgment and prac- 
tical business sense, as well as enthusiastic patriotism. 
Two farmers of distinguished ability have recently 
(1906) become members of King Haakon's cabinet. 

i'he principal business street, where the best shops 
are located, is only a few minutes' walk from here at 
the south (left). Let us go over there for a sight 
of the fine, substantial buildings and the city people 
as they come and go. Consult the map and see where 
we are next to stand — at the spot marked 5, part way 
up that main thoroughfare which leads from the rail- 
way to the palace. 

Position 4. Map 3. 



38 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position 5. Karl Joban Street, west-northwest to 
the Royal Palace 

Direction — West-northwest up the street. Sur- 
roundings — Shops and office buildings, the best in 
town. 

This street reaches off behind us down beyond the 
market square which we have just visited. Notice 
the trolley cars and the tall electric light poles — 
Christiania keeps well up with the times in all these 
modern improvements. The best equipped and most 
fashionable shops are mostly on this street and all 
the most important people in town use this thorough- 
fare. That farther building at the south (left) side 
of the street is the Parliament House; the University 
is not in sight, but its buildings are only a short dis- 
tance ahead and at our right (northwest) beyond 
those business-blocks with the awnings. That stately, 
pillared portico in the distance, which gives the street- 
vista its dignified climax, is the entrance to King 
Haakon's palace. 

The name of this fine thoroughfare is in itself a 
reminder of the period (1814-1905) when Norway 
owed allegiance to sovereigns of the Bernadotte 
line. H. M. Karl Johan (Karl XIV), for whom 
it was named, was the first sovereign of that dynasty, 
king of both Norway and Sweden.* 

If you were to enter the shop of one of the book- 
sellers in this neighborhood, you would find on the 
shelves not only the works of Norwegian and Danish 
authors (the written language of Norway and that 
of Denmark are almost the same, though pronuncia- 
tion and local idioms vary), but also a great many 
books by German, French, British and American 



* See the chapter on Norwegian history, page 256. 



Position 5. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 39 

writers. Well educated people here know Shake- 
speare, Goethe and Schiller as well as if they were 
Germans or Britons; many read them in the original, 
others in translation. Foreign novelists and con- 
temporary writers on political and social problems are 
popular. The humor of Mark Twain appeals strongly 
to the Norse people; he has a great many readers 
here. 

The post-office is only five or six minutes' walk 
from here on a street corner near the market. It is 
a busy place, for the clerks handle not only the city 
mail but a great deal which is distributed for for- 
warding to all parts of the kingdom. The domestic 
letter rate is 10 ore (about 2^ cents) for a half- 
ounce, and even at this rather high figure the volume 
of correspondence has doubled in ten years' time. 

Another interesting and even more beautiful out- 
look over this central part of the town can be had 
if we go down a short distance nearer the harbor at 
our left (south). Be sure to consult the map again 
for the sixth outlook, very near the one last taken. 
Observe that the red lines include part of the same 
ground as before. 

Position 6. Norway^s £nc capital city 

Direction — Northwest across Parliament Street 
which runs parallel with Karl Johan Street. Sur- 
roundings — Business streets. 

From Karl Johan Street we had a glimpse of the 
northern wall of the Parliament Building at our left. 
Now we are at its southern side, so we find it on our 
right. Many an exciting session have the people's 
representatives held within those substantial walls. It 
was there in 1905 they cast the decisive vote that 

Position. 6 Map 3. 



40 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

separated Norway from Sweden, thus establishing 
absolute national independence.* A gallery open to 
the public admits visitors to hear debates. The struc- 
ture at the left, beyond this little, grassy square, be- 
longs to the Order of Free Masons. Those embower- 
ing trees straight ahead are in Eidsvold Square ; band 
concerts are given in summer-time in a public garden 
adjoining that one. The building with the large dome 
is a fine theatre ; beyond that, of course we recognize 
the huge, oblong mass of the palace. 

In winter the snow is often two or three feet deep 
in the parks, and the street traffic is on runners in- 
stead of wheels, jingling sleigh-bells sounding every- 
where just as in the northern United States. Tweedie's 
Winter Jaunt to Norway gives a glowing account of 
the pleasures of a winter visit here a few years ago — 
of sleigh-rides and winter sports and all sorts of 
pleasant festivities. 

The National University, Library and Museum are 
only a short distance from here ahead of us and off 
at the right, beyond the Parliament Building and the 
adjacent tree-covered square. 

In a small building close by the University there is 
a most interesting relic of the old heroic age of Nor- 
wegian history — an inheritance from the times of the 
storied Vikings. Our map locates the spot at 7, but 
gives no radiating red lines, because our outlook is 
to be limited to only a few feet. 

Position 7. Old Viking ship, explorer of northern 
seas and hnrial boat oi a Norse chief 

It seems a pity that this precious vestige of old 
times should be stored in this easily inflammable 



*See page 264. 
Position 7. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 41 

wooden building, but its huge dimensions (103 feet 
long) make it impracticable to put it in the Museum 
proper. It was in 1880 that the battered and worn 
old hulk was dug out of a mound of clay, ninety 
miles away down the coast near Sandefjord. Evi- 
dently some Norse chieftain had been buried with 
his vessel centuries ago (that tent-shaped erection 
amidships was his mortuary chamber) ; at some inter- 
mediate period the unique tomb was opened and rifled 
of its chief valuables. Enough, however, remained to 
show that it must have been devoted to the memory 
of some prominent personage — perhaps one of the 
grim old Vikings who had led the famous ex- 
peditions to the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland, 
or northern France — who knows ? possibly even across 
the Atlantic to the "Vinland" of the Western conti- 
nent! These planks composing the clinker-built hull 
are of oak, not sawed, but carefully split and then 
trimmed with an axe. They were fastened with iron 
nails; there are sixteen rowlocks, but there seems to 
be no trace of benches for the rowers. The rudder 
was affixed to one side — what sailors to-day call the 
"starboard" (steer-board) side. It originally had one 
mast, and when in action the gunwales were "armored" 
with overlapping shields of wood with metal decora- 
tions. When it was dug out of the clay, its discov- 
erers found with it pieces of yellow and red cloth, 
some metal and wooden utensils, an axe, and a plank 
that may have been used as a gang-plank. 

Old Norse Sagas (stories) of a thousand years ago 
describe boats of the same sort as this. Egil's Saga, 
for instance, which depicts life in the tenth century, 
tells how 

"Thorolf had a large, seagoing ship ; in every 
way it was most carefully built, and painted 

Position 7. Map 3. 



42 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

nearly all over above the water-line. It had a 
sail with blue and red stripes, and all the rigging 
was very elaborate. This he made ready, and 
ordered his men-servants to go with it; he had 
put on board dried fish, skins, tallow, grey fur 
and other furs which he had from the moun- 
tains," etc., etc. 

Beats like this were calked with the hair of cows 
and goats. Tradition says that when they were 
launched human sacrifices were a part of the cere- 
mony. However that may be, there is no doubt but 
this very boat before us now saw many an exciting 
adventure in its day, striking terror to the hearts of 
coast-dwellers in faraway lands, when it came in sight 
with its marauding crew. It was in a vessel at least 
of this same type that Rolf sailed to northern France 
and up the Seine, on that momentous voyage of his 
which led to the Norman settlement and influence in 
western Europe, and so to the Norman conquest of 
England. Carlyle says: 

"No Homer sang these Norse sea-kings, but 

Agamemnon^s was a small audacity, and of small 

fruit in the world, to some of them — to Hrolf's 

of Normandy, for instance! Hrolf, or Rollo, 

Duke of Normandy, the wild sea-king, has a share 

in governing England at this hour !" 

A great deal of information about Norse life in the 

old times when this boat was new, was collected a 

generation ago and published in Du Chaillu's work 

called The Viking Age. It is well worth study by 

any one having access to the volumes. 

Now what we are to do next is to visit the palace 
of Norway's present king, first seeing it from the park 
approach. The map sets down a figure 8 where we 
are to stand near the upper end of Karl Johan Street. 

Position 7. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 43 

Position 8. The Royal Palace 

Direction — Northwest. Surroundings — The grassy, 
tree-shaded grounds, with residence and business dis- 
tricts of the city reaching off behind us. The build- 
ing where we saw the old ship is now off at our right 
(north). Nearer us, at the right, just opposite those 
broad steps, Karl Johan Street begins, leading down 
toward the harbor in our rear. You remember how 
we looked up that street from Position 5, seeing the 
palace at the end of the vista. 

That statue on the terrace represents King Karl 
Johan himself, in whose time the palace was built. 
Nov. 25, 1905, H. M. King Haakon VII was escorted 
through the town to take possession of this royal home. 
It was from that balcony in the portico that he ad- 
dressed the people gathered here to welcome him and 
Queen Maud."^ 

These children find the park an attractive play- 
ground and enjoy it freely. They are all enrolled in 
good public schools, open to everybody in town, and 
their lessons cover about the same range as those in 
a good American public school of the same grade.* 
Needy children have books furnished without charge, 
but most parents prefer to furnish such supplies. 
Their favorite story-books include many that Ameri- 
can and English children know by heart — Hans 
Christian Andersen's charming tales were written in 
Danish, which they understand; Grimm's immortal 
fairy tales have been translated for them from the 
German; they have besides a great many stories of 
their own, written by Norwegians. Probably every 



* See page 265 for an accoimt of how His Majesty came to be Norway's 
sovereign. 

* See page 289 for partictilars about the school system. 



Position 8. Map 3. 



44 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

one of these little folks here now has heard Asbjorn- 
sen's funny account of The Goat That Wouldn't Go 
Home to Supper; maybe they have all shivered with 
terror in their beds at night, remembering Lie's tale 
about the bad boy who threw things at a Goblin and 
how afterwards a Big Hand reached in at the door 
and clutched him to carry him off ! Norwegian stories 
are full of action. 

It is not difficult to obtain admission to the palace. 
Let us get an idea of the impressive interior. 

Position g. The great ball room at the Palace 

This has for several generations been the traditional 
place for royal receptions, and now that the young 
King and Queen have come to Christiania, these fine 
old crystal chandeHers will light up many an interest- 
ing assemblage of citizens and guests. The well- 
known democratic simplicity of Norwegian taste keeps 
the display on a scale more modest than that of other 
European capitals, where much is made of title 
and family, but Norway has brains and beauty, and 
sufficient wealth to keep up her dignity whenever 
occasion demands it. 

The language chiefly spoken here would, of course, 
be the tongue common to Norway and Denmark, but 
German, French, English, and perhaps half a dozen 
others might very likely be heard at any gathering of 
special size and distinction. Many Christiania people 
are fine linguists, speaking several languages besides 
their mother tongue. 

The Norwegian whose work did most in his time 
to extend a knowledge of Norwegian literature 
through the reading and theatre-going world was 

Position 9. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 45 

without doubt Plenrik Ibsen, though his lifelong 
friend, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, has worthily earned 
fame almost as great. We have the privilege (very 
unusual during the great man's latter days) of being 
admitted to his home on a street near the palace, only 
a short time before his death. See the map for pre- 
cise location. 

Position JO. Henrik Ibsen, the dramatic poet, in 
bia borne at Cbristiania 

The best strength of the physical frame is gone, 
for age and illness have wrought havoc there; but 
that lion-like head bears magnificent testimony to the 
clear mental vision, the superb audacity and the artis- 
tic master-strength that have made its owner's name 
celebrated all around the world.* 

Ibsen died May 23, 1906. In order to show the 
nation's appreciation of his genius. Parliament voted 
that his burial should be conducted by state officials at 
the expense of the government. 

In a pretty peninsular suburb of the town there is 
a particularly quaint, picturesque old building that 
every visitor to Christiania takes pains to see. Let us 
not omit from our own tour that relic of romantic 
days. Our map does not extend quite far enough 
westward to show the exact spot, but it is not far 
from 12 near the left-hand margin. 

Position II, Tbe old Cbnrcb of Gol, a quaint 
twelfth century cbnrcb reconstructed in the royal 
park at Osoarsbal 

Direction — Somewhat south of east. Surroundings — 
Paths, shrubbery and scattered buildings in the park. 

* See page 33 S fur notes in regard to Ibsen's writings. 



Positions 10, 11. Map 3. 



46 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

When Bayard Taylor, the author of Northern 
Travel, came to Norway fifty years ago, this curious 
timber church was in its original place, two days' 
journey from here, up in the HalHngdal. He men- 
tioned it as standing there. It was only a few years 
ago (1875) that the building was carefully taken down, 
brought over here to Christiania and put together 
again as we see it now, to remain a perpetual reminder 
for city folks of the picturesque old fashions of their 
sturdy forefathers. 

The bewildering multiplicity of those shingled roofs 
looks at the first glance as if the plan of the old 
twelfth century builders must have been intricate, but 
it was really quite simple. The lowermost roof covers 
a sort of arcade or piazza extending around the body 
of the building, but not connecting with the church 
interior except by way of that front door. The actual 
interior is only a small oblong space — it could never 
have afforded room for more than fifty worshippers 
at once. The altar occupies the chancel, which we see 
extending at the left (east) end. Of course that win- 
dow in the gable is a modern addition — no such win- 
dow glass was used in Norway in the days of Sigurd 
the Crusader — when the structure was probably built. 
In old times the interior must have been a place both 
dark and chilly for saying one's prayers. Without any 
doubt many a spiritual tragedy was wrestled with 
under that queer, dragon-decorated roof — the Hal- 
Hngdal people in old times were famous, even in 
rough-and-ready Norway, for the imperiousness of 
their tempers and the ferocity of their feuds. It is 
said that wives attending neighborhood feasts and 
merrymakings in mediaeval times used dutifully to 
carry with them their husbands' shrouds, so easily pos- 
sible it was that a feast might end in a funeral. 



Position 11. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 47 

When this church was first built, the Christian re- 
Hgion had been estabHshed in Norway less than two 
hundred years. The picturesque old pagan faith of 
earlier times had a strong hold on the people and they 
gave it up with reluctance. It would not be strange 
if more than once a worshipper, lingering in that 
covered piazza after service for shelter from a sum- 
mer thunder shower, wondered whether, after all, it 
might not be the noise of Thor's hammer that made 
the thunders roll up and down the valley!* 

The change from Catholic to Lutheran Protestant 
Christianity was made in the sixteenth century, in the 
time of King Christian III. 

Evergreen trees like these that shade the grass 
around us are quite typical of Norway. The country 
is well stocked with deciduous trees too, but pine, 
spruce, larch and hemlock of many species are most 
characteristically abundant, as we might expect when 
we remember the latitude of the kingdom. At the 
present time nearly one-fourth of the entire area of 
the country is forest-covered. 

Only a few minutes' walk from here, within this 
same park, is a summer villa built fifty years ago for 
King Oscar I and called in his honor Oscarshal. 
Now for many years it has been open to the public, 
and the view obtainable from its tower makes it a 
favorite objective point for townspeople and tourists. 
The map marks with a red 12 the spot where we are 
to stand. Notice what the diverging lines tell about 
the reach of our outlook — it is evidently to be out 
across the harbor and over part of the city. 



* See the chapter on Religion, page 293, for some details in regard to the 
earlier faith. 



Position 11. Map 3. 



48 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



Position X2. The Osoarshal royal gardens and 
Christiania irom the chateau 

Direction — A little north of east. Surroundings — 
The park where the old Church of Gol and other build- 
ings are scattered about among the trees. 

The tower on which we stand is not in itself very 
tall, but, perched on this hill, it places us at an im- 
pressive height above those harbor waters. The most 
popular way of approach from town is by boat, from 
that landing just opposite across to the white-towered 
gate-house down at the end of the winding path. 
Those who prefer to ride or walk take a road a little 
farther to the north (left) than we can see at this 
moment. 

The district that we see straight ahead across the 
harbor contains some of the best residences in town. 
At the extreme right we see the rear of the royal 
palace, easily recognizable with its long, level roof — 
Karl Johan Street, the Parliament House and the 
business districts are, of course, still farther toward 
the east (right). Up among the suburban hills at the 
left is the favorite place for sledge-coasting and ski- 
jumping in winter. Tweedie's Winter Jaunt in Nor- 
way tells all about the fun and excitement of Christ- 
iania's midwinter athletic contests. 

Between thirty and forty miles from here, straight 
ahead beyond those hills, lies the frontier of Sweden, 
whose territory stretches between us and the Baltic. 

It will be interesting, as we go farther west and 
north, to see how the character of Norway changes, 
becoming more and more elevated, broken and mag- 
nificent in point of scenic effect. Though we find 
hills here pleasantly diversifying the landscape, this 
southern district is low and level in comparison with 

Position 12. Map 3. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 49 

the ragged highlands of the Atlantic coast which we 
are presently to visit.* 

Several times during the past four centuries Nor- 
way has had difficulties with her Swedish neighbors 
over the border. About eighty miles southeast of 
Christiania is a place we ought to see, so celebrated 
is it in history, song and story. 

Turn now from the map of Christiania back to 
Map 2, which shows all southern Norway. Our 
thirteenth position is marked on the map at Frederiks- 
hald, southeast of the capital, close by the Swedish 
frontier. 

Position 13. The old fortress of Prederikssten at 
Frederiksbald 

Direction — Southeast. Surroundings — The larger 
part of the town is now behind us. Christiania is 
also behind us, more than eighty miles away. 

The river here at our feet is flowing westerly 
(right) to join the Idefjord, an arm of the Skager- 
rak, below the town. It has come down through one 
of the best timber regions in all Europe and the port 
here at its mouth is a town of nearly twelve thousand 
people, carrying on a profitable shipping business. 

That is the famous old fortress we have come to 
see, up on the crest of the rock, like a Grecian 
"acropolis." 

The town here at the entrance of the river valley 
has for hundreds of years been an important strategi- 
cal point, for it guards the national frontier. Swedish 
territory begins at a tributary of this river close by 



*See pages 271 for notes about the unique character of Norwav as 
the "lay of the land " 



Position 13. Map 2. 



50 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

at the south (right), though the boundary Hue is 
very crooked, and, when one is going nowadays over 
to Goteborg by rail, the route runs in such a way as 
to enter Sweden for the first time almost twenty 
miles farther away at Kornso. In 1658-60, when Nor- 
way and Sweden were at war, the people living here 
made a specially gallant stand against invading Swedes, 
place might be made, had that fortress built in antici- 
pation of future trouble. He called it Frederikssten. 
The town had previously been called simply **Halden," 
but the king changed its name to Frederikshald. 

In 1716 came another military crisis. Charles XII 
of Sweden, the great warrior-genius who had mxade 
a record of dazzling brilliancy in one European war 
after another, came over here to take this Norwegian 
fortress, but was held off by the valor of a handful 
of Norse soldiers and townspeople, who applied the 
torch to their homes. It was a plain civilian named 
Colbjornsen to whom tradition gives special credit for 
the defence, but the king's final defeat at this time 
was caused by the complete annihilation of his fleet by 
the doughty naval hero Tordenskjold. 

And even that was not all. In 1718 Swedish Charles 
XII came over here a second time and laid siege to 
this same fort, determined not to be foiled by de- 
fenses comparatively so insignificant; but he lost his 
life in one of the trenches of the besieging army, 
whereupon the Swedes in dismay raised the siege, 
retiring to their own territory by a dismal midwinter 
march over the Scandinavian hills. One of the most 
celebrated modern paintings now in the Swedish 
National Museum at Stockholm, is a canvas by Baron 
Cederstrom representing the sad return of the 
Swedes bearing the dead body of their great leader. 



Position 13. Map 2. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 51 

It was to this place that the EngHsh vSamuel John- 
son made allusion in his often-quoted lines on the 
end of Charles XII : — 

"His fall was destined to a barren strand, 

A petty fortress and a dubious hand; 

He left a name at which the world grew pale, 

To point a moral or adorn a tale." 
Tourists visiting Norway always find the west- 
coast districts especially attractive in point of pic- 
turesque scenery. The most interesting way to reach 
the Atlantic fjords is by going across-country from 
Christiania. 

Consult Map 2 and notice that a short railway ex- 
tends westward from the capital, a line only about 
sixty miles long. From its outer terminus at Kongs- 
berg a different kind of transportation service has been 
arranged by government authority — we shall see the 
working of that supplementary service a little farther 
along in our journey. But first let us have a glimpse 
of Kongsberg itself. Turn to Map 4. Our proposed 
outlook is marked 14 on that map, near the right- 
hand margin. 

Position 14. Village cburcb and homes of Kongs- 
berg beside the bridge-spanned rapids of the 
I^aagen 

Direction — Nearly north. Surroundings — A coun- 
try highroad and adjacent fields. 

Rivers are almost innumerable in Norway. This 
has a special interest as being one of the few whose 
energy is applied on any large scale to industrial pur- 
poses. The original sources of the stream lie away 
up among the Telemarken hills at the northwest. A 
dozen or twenty lakes and countless brooks have con- 
tributed their waters in the course of its devious hun- 



Position 14. Map 4. 



52 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

dred-mile journey down between the hills to this point 
here, and it has yet sixty or seventy miles to run 
southward before it will reach the Skagerrak. At a 
point a few rods below here, on that opposite (west) 
bank, the government maintains a factory for the 
manufacture of small-arms — revolvers, rifles and that 
sort of thing. We have in view only part of the vil- 
lage at this moment; the houses are scattered over a 
considerable distance on the highways and cannot all 
be seen at once. 

Many of the Kongsberg people are employed in 
certain old silver mines, three or four miles from here, 
owned and worked by the State. In many cases they 
stay at the mines through the week and come home 
for Sundays. Smelting works are conducted by the 
State and a mint established here stamps coin for com- 
mon circulation throughout the kingdom. The rail- 
way journey from here down to Christiania takes less 
than an hour and a half (Christiania lies off at our 
right, i. e., the east, sixty miles away), so the prob- 
lem of transporting either bullion, coin or firearms is 
very simple. 

The life of a country lad like this one has been well 
described in stories by Norse writers. Bjornson's 
A Happy Boy is interesting in this connection; so is 
Boyesen's A Norse Boyhood. The educational op- 
portunities in a place like Kongsberg are about the 
same as those in an American country town, but am- 
bitious youths who have the right stuff in them can 
work their way through higher schools and the Uni- 
versity over in Christiania. It is easily possible that 
this bright-faced urchin may sometime be a member 
of Parliament, attending sessions in that substantial 
building we saw from Positions 5 and 6 ; on the other 
hand, he is likely enough to seek his fortune at the 

Position 14. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 53 

Other side of the world, Norse fashion, and help build 
up the twentieth-century civilization of America. 

Many tourists from other countries get their first 
impressions of Norwegian country hospitality at one 
of the pleasant inns at Kongsberg; let us visit one 
over on the other side of the river. 

Position 15. Victoria Hotel, adorned with reindeer 
antlers 

That door at the left leads to the office on the 
ground floor and the dining-room above. The host 
(whom we see standing in the middle of the yard), 
has his own apartments at the right; above them are 
public sitting-rooms and bedrooms for the guests. 

Those handsome antlers are souvenirs of hunting 
excursions — or possibly, in some cases, the picturesque 
rehcs of some fine reindeer offered up at the call of 
hospitality in the form of juicy steak — reindeer meat 
is a popular dish at Norwegian inns. We ourselves 
shall presently have opportunities to see both the 
wild creatures, roaming free over the desolate heights 
of the Hardanger Vidda (Position 45) and some of 
the domesticated animals kept by Lapps farther north 
(Position 96). Deer proper are protected from sports- 
men by stringent game-laws. 

This house has guests in winter-time who come for 
•the shooting and ski-running. Spender's Two Winters 
in Norway, for example, gives an interesting account 
of winter sports hereabouts, including an illustration 
showing this very inn-yard covered with snow. W. C. 
Slingsby's Norway, the Mountain Playground, tells of 
the author's interesting experiences up north of here, 
shooting reindeer. The ordinary tourist season is 
pretty strictly limited to midsummer, for westward 
beyond this point, as already stated, there are no rail- 



Position 15. Map 4. 



54 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

ways. Everybody travels by means of carriages of 
one sort or another and post-horses. A carriage and 
pair, Hke this with which these tourists are about to 
depart, with the driver's services, costs about twenty 
cents a mile. The vehicles in much more common use 
are cheaper; they are kariols and stolkjcerres, smaller 
two-wheeled affairs, requiring usually but one horse ; 
we shall see a number of those along the route as we 
continue our own journey. Travelers sometimes en- 
gage at the beginning of a trip the necessary trans- 
portation for the entire route, but, if any long dis- 
tance is to be covered, it is more customary, instead of 
continually pausing for resting a horse, to keep chang- 
ing horses at licensed posting-stations ten or twelve 
miles apart. The roads, though mostly well kept, are 
hilly and hard; the Norwegian horses, though well- 
fed and willing, are usually light-weight, hardly more 
than ponies, and cannot be expected to keep going all 
day.* 

Lykkelig Reise (a prosperous journey), wishes the 
hospitable host. Now we are to begin following one 
of the typical country highways through Telemarken. 

Consult again Map 4 and find the next (sixteenth) 
point in our journey, a little west from Kongsberg. 
Notice that the map shows two lakes there. The red 
lines indicate that we are to see across both lakes and 
several miles beyond. 

Position i6. Country girls in baying time — ont- 
look over Bolkesjo and Folsjd to the Himingen 
Mountains 

Direction — West-southwest. Surroundings — A green 
valley, all walled-in with rugged hills. 



* See page 303 for further notes about the posting system. 



Position 16. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 55 

(We have here so striking an instance of the dif- 
ference between an ordinary ''picture" and a stereo- 
graph that it is well worth noting. An examination 
of the card as held in the hand like a common photo- 
graph would naturally lead us to suppose that we stand 
on nearly the same level as the highway. We assume 
without doubt that the two lakes are practically on 
the same level. The stereoscope undeceives us in both 
matters. ) 

Up behind us on this bank is an inn ("Grand 
Hotel") well patronized by summer tourists. If one 
were to follow the highway to the left it would lead 
him back to Kongsberg and Christiania. 

These girls have been at work in a field not far 
away. It is customary all through this part of the 
country for women to do a good share of the heavy 
out-of-door work; they think it no hardship — often, 
indeed, they prefer it to confinement at lighter tasks 
indoors. Their dress is the customary wear here- 
abouts — dark woolen skirts, white or Hght-colored 
blouses, bright red bodices, and aprons of heavy sub- 
stantial stuff to save the petticoats below. Em- 
broidered or lace-trimmed white aprons give such a 
toilet the smarter effect desired for Sundays and 
holidays. 

That white-painted cottage is one honored many 
years ago by a visit from the German Crown Prince, 
who afterward became Kaiser Friedrich III (father 
of the present German Emperor). It is not now oc- 
cupied, but is kept as a memorial of the royal lodger. 
The other buildings near by are storehouses belong- 
ing to farmers near by — places for keeping grain, 
vegetables, farming tools, in short, all sorts of ac- 
cumulated supplies. That odd design, the upper story 
projecting out over the lower, is something seen over 

Position 16. Map 4 



d6 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

and over again in Norway — the old, traditional type 
of such a building. We shall see still another design 
in closer detail when we move on to our next stand- 
point. 

That curious difference in the lake levels is even 
greater than it looks from here. In order to go from 
the nearer pond down to the shore of the farther one 
we should have to descend three hundred feet, by a 
steep bank on the farther side of a narrow tree-cov- 
ered ridge between them. There is good trout fishing 
in the farther lake. Two or three generations ago, 
when Du Chaillu came travelling through this region 
it was very little known to Americans and Europeans 
in general. In his work on The Land of the Mid- 
night Sun, he told of a visit at a farm near where we 
are now, describing the place as 

"... nestled among fir-clad hills whose 
dark color contrasted with the green meadows 
and fields which they surrounded. The place was 
partly hemmed in by barren mountains on which 
were seen patches of snow.* Here two lakes, 
apparently overlapping each other, are noticed — 
the Bolke, of a triangular shape, 1,000 feet, and 
the Tol (Fol) 690 feet above sea level. Every- 
where little streams trickled down the hillsides." 
Horses may be rested or changed here at Bolkesjo. 
A short distance from where we looked over the lakes 
we can have a chance to see one of the typical light 
gigs such as are in use by thousands every summer. 
The spot where we are to stand is marked with a 
red 17. Notice that the red lines on the map reach 
off toward the higher interior of the country, one line 
reaching to Mount Gausta. 



* There is snow at this minute over on those farthest heights, as we can 
see by looking sharply. 



Position 16. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 57 

Position 17, Waiting for passengers on the road 
near Bolkesjo—peak of ML Gausta over height 
at left 

Direction — A little north of west. Surroundings — 
Fields and hills and valleys, like those seen from our 
last position. 

Here is the stolkjcerre all ready for another section 
of the 'cross-country trip. The seat is wide enough 
for two people, differing thereby from a kariol, which 
carries but one. There are no springs and seldom any 
cushions. That leather apron reaching up over the 
seat is often a priceless protection from sudden showers 
and sharp winds ; indeed there are places a little 
farther along our route where the tourist sometimes 
needs shelter from snowstorms in July! Baggage is 
lashed to that platform under and behind the seat, 
and the driver perches beside the baggage or upon it, 
skilfully guiding the horse from that apparently 
awkward position. Sometimes the sky ds gut (post- 
boy) is a young girl, equally accustomed to driving. 
If the passenger prefers, he may handle the reins him- 
self, but in that case he becomes responsible for acci- 
dents, so most tourists trust their fate to the skydsgut. 
Horse-language here, as well as human language, is 
different from that in English-speaking lands — the 
exhortation to speed is a curious sort of cluck or smack 
of the lips, very difficult to describe ; instead of calling 
ivhoa the driver makes a kind of burring-purring 
noise with his lips — a signal promptly understood by 
the worker between the shafts. There are no leather 
traces as in an American harness. The shafts are fast- 
ened to the saddle. The horses are usually small, like 
this one, but surprisingly sure-footed and enduring. 

A celebrated story by the Norwegian writer, Jonas 
Lie (translated under the title Little Grey), has for 

Position 17. Map 4. 



58 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

its three chief characters, a Norse lad about the age 
of this one here, a sweet-faced country girl and a 
willing little beast of just this type. The horse was 
sold into hard hands, the lad went far away to seek 
his fortune, the blue-eyed girl stayed at home, working 
and waiting. It was a sad time they had, especially the 
poor pony, but all came out right in the end and the 
lovers, presumably, "lived happy ever after." 

There is not much money for the farmer in this 
posting business. The fee of six or seven cents a 
mile for a pony cart of this sort (the boy receives 
some trifling gratuity besides) is seldom good com- 
pensation for the cost of keeping up the equipage, the 
labor of harnessing and unharnessing and the incon- 
venience of letting one's horses go off with tourists 
just when one wants them for some task on the farm. 
Householders may, however, be obliged to take a State 
license for posting service whether they desire it or 
not, in case they are located at a point where change 
of horses is necessary for travelers. A skyds station 
has also to be an inn, at least to the extent of keep- 
ing travelers over night when necessary and provid- 
ing meals.* 

This stabbur (storehouse) is set on posts, partly to 
avoid dampness and partly to discourage predatory 
rats and mice. The sheaves of grain fastened to the 
twin poles are, on the other hand, a graceful offering 
to the birds. Such hospitality to wild neighbors in 
feathers is a traditionally pretty custom of the coun- 
try. People who do not practise it all winter are at 
least likely to put up a sheaf at Christmas time, mak- 
ing a gift to the birds a part of the holiday celebration 
of the household. 



*See chapter on Transportation, page 301. 



Position 17. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 59 

The mountain whose summit barely peeps over that 
range at the left is an important local landmark, about 
twenty-five miles from here in a straight line. It is 
the highest peak in south-central Norway. We shall 
presently (Position 19) see the whole tremendous 
bulk of the mountain towering over the Maan valley. 

In winter the snow is often breast high over this 
road and those adjoining fields, and the thermometer 
goes down below zero. On a still day that is not so 
bad as one might suppose, for the air is dry and brac- 
ing, and if one is well protected with furs and over- 
shoes a brisk ride in a Norwegian sleigh means a 
pleasant adventure. When one sleigh meets another 
and somebody has to make way, the horses flounder 
bravely through the white drifts, frequently upsetting 
their passengers, but doing no serious harm. The 
local postman goes about in winter on skis — the Nor- 
wegian species of snow-shoes ; a slender piece of 
wood six or eight feet long, curving upward at the 
ends, is strapped to each foot, somewhat like the exag- 
gerated blade of a skate. Experts can travel ten 
miles an hour with that equipment. 

Mrs. Tweedie's Winter Jaunt in Norway gives an 
entertaining account of a visit made in midwinter to 
this very place near the lakes. A part of the way up 
from Kongsberg her driver came along on the ice 
above the frozen river — the same stream that we have 
just seen rejoicing in summer freedom below the falls 
(Position 14). 

The map sets down our next standpoint a few 
miles' (three hours') journey northwest of here, 
marking the spot 18. We shall find it near the south- 
ern end of a narrow lake. 



Position 17. Map 4. 



60 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position i8. When the lake steamer calls at Tinoset 
pier,— outlook across the rippling Tinsjo to the 
hills 

Direction — Northeast. Surroundings — The hand- 
ful of houses comprising the village of Tinoset. 

The head of these rippling waters is twenty miles 
off at our left. This lake is just a long, narrow pocket 
between the hills, its outlet traveling fifty miles farther 
to reach the sea, away at our right, and on its way 
the same outlet takes in the waters of the two "over- 
lapping'' lakes that we saw at Bolkesjo (Position 16). 
There are no towns bordering the lake — indeed there 
are no towns in this part of Norway, but only tiny 
hamlets and scattered farms. At several places along 
the banks that little steamer calls during the summer 
for passengers and freight. Summer tourists, of 
course, increase the volume of local business. 

The people we find here speak only Norwegian. The 
elderly woman in the roadway is wearing wooden 
shoes, but that sort of footwear is not common to-day 
among people of the younger generation. The cut of 
her gown is old-fashioned, too. In her home we may 
be sure the old-time house-crafts of spinning and 
weaving are still carried on as they were many years 
ago. At present factory-made cott^ia-cloth is sold 
cheaply by country shopkeepers and by itinerant ped- 
lers, so that the need of home weaving is becoming 
less and less. 

The home cooking of a country housewife like 
this is a simple matter — people hereabouts eat a good 
deal of grod (porridge) and barley bread, salt pork 
and potatoes. Romme grod is porridge made with 
boiled cream and barley. The bread this woman 
makes is almost never in big fat loaves, but in thin, 
flat sheets — a tough, grayish stuff, resembling paste- 



Position 18. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 61 

board, but, after all, tasting very good when one is 
sufficiently tired and hungry. The one table luxury 
that everybody expects to share is coftee. The cook- 
ing is done in kettles hung over open fires, on iron 
plates over hot coals, or in stone ovens heated directly 
with hot coals that have to be swept out before dough 
can take their place. 

The sources of this lake are in one of the most 
beautiful parts of southern Norway; our next move- 
ment will be to explore a valley through which its 
most celebrated tributary descends. Consult Map 4. 
Our route continues up the lake, then turns off into a 
valley opening from the west bank. The figure 19 
marks where we shall stand. 

Position ig. Snowy, rock-ribbed heights of Mount 
Gausta, {6,i8o feet) towering above quiet homes 
in the Maan Valley 

Direction — Southwest. Surroundings — Small fields 
and steep hillside pastures of neighboring farmers. 

This is the same mountain that we saw peering at 
us over intervening heights when we stood with the 
waiting post-boy at Position 17. That spot is now 
about twenty-five miles away at our left (east). 

Distinct peaks like this broken cone of Gausta are 
the exception in Norway. Most of the so-called moun- 
tains which we shall see later are just broken parts 
of big, elevated table-lands. A good many tourists 
ascend Gausta during the summer. A guide is neces- 
sary, but the route is not dangerous as mountain 
climbing goes. It takes six hours or so to reach the 
top, and there one finds a tourist shelter with ac- 
commodations for a dozen people — many do like to 
spend the night and so be there in the morning, a 
mile up in the sky, ready for the glories of sunrise. 



Position 19. Map 4. 



62l NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSC ^PE 

Life down here on these Httle farms mostly a 
quiet round of home tasks, its chief variety made by 
going to church on pleasant Sundays. In winter the 
mountains on both sides of the valley postpone the 
sunrise and hasten the sunset, making a December 
day practically less than five hours long. Foitunately 
everybody in a country place like this can read, and 
books and papers help pass away the long evenings 
after work is done. 

The furnishing of such farm houses is very simple 
— plain wooden benches and tables — stationary beds, 
somewhat shorter than English and Americans like, 
built into the side of the room, an open fire and a 
stone oven for cooking; perhaps an iron stove for 
burning wood. 

The farmers here in Norway seldom build very 
large barns after the fashion of American country 
districts — they often put up a number of separate 
buildings of modest size, stable, granary, tool-house, 
workshop, and so on. The consequence is that a 
single prosperous guard or farm estate may look to 
a stranger like a tiny hamlet. Nearly all the build- 
ings are alike unpainted, "weathering" into pleasant 
homely browns and grays, but, of course, the dwelling 
houses can be distinguished as here by their chimneys. 
The two methods of roof finish that we see now indi- 
cate more prosperity and progressiveness than we shall 
find as we go farther up into the remoter country 
districts. 

The well-sweep by whose means this man has just 
drawn up a bucket of water, is precisely like the one 
where hung the "old oaken bucket" of the familiar 
American song — ^the same crude but eflfective con- 
trivance is found in many countries all over the world ; 
it is practically the same device that the Egyptians 

Position 19. Map 4. 



NORW .' THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 63 

have used f ^m time immemorial to hoist water from 
the Nile into their rich and thirsty fields. But this 
bucket here is no cooper's product, no "iron-bound 
bucket" with oaken staves; it looks from here more 
like galvanized iron or else wood pulp without seams. 
Immense quantities of wood pulp are manufactured 
in Norway, indeed, that is one of the chief industries 
of the kingdom, but the greater part of the product 
goes to Continental paper mills. 

Bayard Taylor's Northern Travel tells about the 
hospitality be found in one of these homes, years ago, 
when fatigued and hungry he "at last saw a star of 
promise, the light of Ole Torgersen's kitchen window." 

When the river ice breaks up in spring and the 
snows are melting on all these heights, the little river 
down there in the valley naturally takes on twice its 
midsummer volume. At any time of year the stream 
is large enough to make a fine showing at any steep 
descent. About six miles farther up this valley there 
is a place where the river has had to leap over a tre- 
mendous precipice — a sight travelers make long pil- 
grimages to see. The spot is marked 20 on our map. 

Position 2o» Imposing heanty of spray-enshrouded 
Rjukan Fas, the ** foaming fall,'* in its 800 foot 
leap 

Direction — South southwest. Surroundings — Wild 
mountain heights, rocky and wooded. 

See how the crash of the fall shatters the water 
into infinitesimal particles so light as to be blown 
hither and thither by the draught through the gorge ! 
The cloud of spray looks almost like smoke — indeed 
that is the literal meaning of the name — Rjukan (reek- 
ing or smoking) Fos (fall). 

Position 20. Map 4. 



64 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Does this seem a dizzy perch from which to over- 
look the roaring water? Yet it is secure and com- 
monplace in comparison with the ground from which 
venturesome tourists used to view the same dramatic 
sight years ago, before that narrow shelf was blasted 
out of the mountain-side to make the present highway. 
Fifty and sixty years ago, when Bayard Taylor, and 
Du Chaillu and Madame Pfeiffer made their famous 
Scandinavian journeys, there was only a rough and 
perilous footpath to the spot, and a pilgrim assumed 
some exciting risks in making the excursion at all. 
Du Chaillu in his Land of the Midnight Sun records 
his wonder and admiration over this very sight before 
us now. Taylor's Northern Travel says of the 
author's visit here fifty years ago : 

'The path was impracticable for horses. We 
walked, climbed or scrambled along the side of 
the dizzy steep, where in many places a false step 
would have sent us to the brink of gulfs whose 
mysteries we had no desire to explore. . . . 
All at once patches of lurid gloom appeared 
through the openings of the birch thicket we were 
threading and we came abruptly upon the brink 
of the great chasm into which the river falls. 

"The river first comes in sight, a mass of boil- 
ing foam, shooting around the corner of a line 
of black cliffs which are rent for its passage — 
and then drops in a single fall into a hollow 
caldron of bare, black rock." 

More than one innovation marks the place to-day. 
Beside that fine roadway with the guard-stones and 
iron rail protecting the edge of the narrow shelf, 
there runs a telegraph line. It is really amazing how 
those magic wires have spread over the wildest parts 
of Norway. From the small posting-stations of Tele- 
marken to the fishing towns within the Arctic circle, 



Position 20. Map 4 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STKRKOSCOPE 6o 

the telegraph and telephone are almost everywhere 
available, to help messages leap long intervals of weary 
riding up and down and over and around the endless 
hills. 

Would you like to watch those turbulent, tumbling, 
roaring waters from a point nearer still? Our next 
outlook is to be from that clift which now shows so 
dark just at the right of the descending waters. 



Position 21* Terri£c splendor of the mighty Rjnkan 
Fos, where it begins its 800 foot drop 

Direction — West. Surroundings — The road and the 
rocks on which we last stood are now behind us. 

Year after year travelers come here from different 
parts of Europe and America and for every man the 
splendid majesty of the place has some special mes- 
sage. Goodman's New Ground in Norway has a vivid 
account of the impressions made on its author a few 
years ago. 

This is the way Bayard Taylor told the world a1)out 
it after he had been here:* 

''The water is already foaming as it leaps 
from the summit, and the successive waves, as 
they are whirled into the air, and feel the gusts 
which forever revolve around the abyss, drop 
into beaded fringes in falling and go fluttering 
down like scarfs of the richest lace. It is not 
water, but the spirit of water. The bottom is lost 
in a shifting, snowy film, . . . and around 
this vision of perfect loveliness rise the awful 
walls, wet wnth spray which never dries, and 
crossed by ledges of dazzling turf, from the gulf 
so far below our feet, until, still further above 



* Extract from Northern Travel before quoted. 



Position 21. Map 4. 



66 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

our heads, they Uft their irregular cornices 
against the sky. 

"I do not think I am extravagant when I say 
that the Riukan Fos is the most beautiful cata- 
ract in the world. . . . Not alone during that 
half hour of fading sunset, but day after day and 
night after night, the embroidered spray wreaths 
of the Riukan were falling before me." 

Now turn and look across the gulf. 

Position S2, Rainbow in the spray of Rjakan Fos, 
*'the foaming fall/* spanning the terri&c moun- 
tain gorge 

Direction — Northeast. Surroundings — The cliffs 
which we saw from Position 21. 

Far, far down there below the bridge of the rain- 
bow and the floating clouds of spray we can see the 
river just as Taylor saw it years ago, "shooting around 
the corner of a line of black cliffs," ready for the 
awful plunge into space. The mist which rises almost 
to our faces, catching the sunlight in its net and 
separating it into bands of color, is made up of the 
milHon-trillion particles into which the liquid mass is 
broken by its crashing fall on ragged rocks away down 
below our feet. A rainbow like this very often spans 
the awful gorge with its line of beauty. 

It is easy to understand, in a spot like this, where 
Nature seems so powerful and man seems so small, 
how the Norse people in old times naturally came to 
think of the great forces all around them as big, live 
Powers with imperious wills and uncertain tempers. 
The Power that manifested itself in Wind and Storm 
they took to be the All Father, Odin. (To this very 
time we call the fourth day of our own week Odin's or 
Woden's Day!) The flying clouds were warrior 

Position 22. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 67 

maidens, Amazons hurrying on supernatural errands. 
Over such a bridge as this radiant curve before us, 
by way of Bifrost, the rainbow road, the high gods 
descended from Asagaard, their home, to the earth 
of human homes/^ 

Old-fashioned people in these country districts still 
have a more or less concealed belief in supernatural 
creatures haunting a lonely spot like this. Some of 
these creatures of superstition are small; there are, 
for instance, nisser (goblins), the size of a five-year 
old child, but with the figures and long beards of full- 
grown men. The trolls are, on the contrary, usually 
great, lumbering, awkward creatures with overgrown 
heads, amazingly strong, as befits a dweller on the vast 
mountains, but clumsy and rather stupid and generally 
bad tempered. A solitary journey over one of these 
heights here might open up exciting adventures with 
the Queer People, like those which befell Peer Gynt in 
Ibsen's famous drama. For that matter, if one left 
the main highway, the simple dangers of falling rocks 
and slippery steeps would be enough to satisfy an 
ordinary man's desire for strenuous traveling. They 
tell a sad story about a young man who had lived near 
here long ago and gone away to seek his fortune — after 
several years he came back to keep tryst with his wait- 
ing sweetheart, and as he was coming down by a short 
cut over the mountain-side he fell or else a rock ava- 
lanche overtook him : at all events the damsel waited 
and waited, but the lover never saw the long-antici- 
pated wedding day. 

After making this excursion to the falls, we may 
return to position 18 — ^the boat landing at Tinoset, 

* See papes 20."?- 7 for notes on the ancient pagan faith developed heit- 
abotits before the introduction of Christianitv. 



Position 22. Map 4. 



68 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

where we saw the httle steamer and the country 
neighbors. From Tinoset our proposed route takes 
us some twelve or fourteen miles southwest to a place 
which the map marks 23. At that point a few build- 
ing make a little hamlet — not a large village; some- 
way the country folk hereabouts do not often seem to 
care to have their houses near neighbors — it is the 
exact opposite of the custom of country people in 
England and Ireland. 

Position 23. Many-gabled timber church with curi- 
ous isth century arcade and turrets. Hitterdal 

Direction — We are looking nearly east. Surround- 
ings — We are standing in the highway, with pleasant 
green fields about us. The parsonage is just across 
the road. 

It seems at first thought strange that, in a rock-ribbed 
land like this, most of the buildings should be of 
wood. The fact is that though building stone could 
be easily quarried, the limestone necessary for mortar 
is rare (see, this stone wall is laid without any mortar), 
so it is easier to use timber from the omnipresent 
forests. These pine walls are dark and reddish, with 
pitch, which has been rubbed into the wood to pre- 
serve it from decay. The dry air of this province 
where we are now is favorable to planks and timbers, 
so, if an old farm-house or a country church like this 
escapes accidental destruction by fire it may stand for 
centuries. Against fire the people in such a neighbor- 
hood are, of course, helpless. There are no fire- 
engines outside the few large towns, and water- 
buckets are of little use in a serious emergency. 

Comparatively recent repairs make this curious, un- 
painted structure looks almost modern, albeit strange 



Posftioo 2Z. Matp 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 69 

in design. Those ugly patches of window glass are 
necessarily modern. Between seven and eight hun- 
dred years ago, when this church was built, only a 
century or so after the energetic missionary work of 
Saint Olaf, glass was little used in Norway; probably 
it was only a very ''dim religious light" that entered 
by small unglazed openings in the wall to show the 
faithful where to kneel in prayer. But here the stay- 
at-home Norsemen of this region did gather for 
worship during the times of the Crusades, while some 
of their distant cousins, the descendants of Viking 
forefathers, were taking part in those great Holy 
Wars under the French banner of Philip Augustus 
and the English banner of Richard of the Lion Heart. 
(How the pious souls of that time would have mar- 
velled if anybody could have foretold for their bene- 
fit the way in which messages now flash through the 
air here overhead, along those insulated wires!) 

The plan of the quaint old timber church (a stav- 
kirke the Norwegians call it) is really more simple 
than at first appears. Imagine both of those two lower 
roofs taken away, together with wliat is under them, 
and we should have just a tall, three-story structure, 
forty feet square, gable-roofed, with a lower gabled 
structure (the chancel, 25x30 feet) added at the east 
end. Then imagine how the floor of the church might 
be enlarged all around by the width of an aisle, a row 
of wooden columns taking the place of the solid wall — 
that roof which runs around the building, just below 
the big windows, covers such an aisle. The lower- 
most roof of all protects a curious sort of piazza which 
is not connected with the interior of the church ex- 
cept by way of the entrance doors. It is an odd detail 
of mediaeval design almost never repeated by modern 
bitilders — they say it was intended as a shelter for 



Position 23. Map 4. 



70 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

worshippers who had to come long distances and could 
not precisely time their arrival. On the whole, the 
ancient building has a close family likeness to the 
picturesque edifice from Gol that we saw in the park 
at Christiania (Position 11). Here the dragon-heads 
projecting from the gables are not quite so con- 
spicuous and elaborate. They remind one of the 
queer, evil-looking monsters in stone that adorn Con- 
tinental stone churches of about the same period. They 
probably had originally some meaning with regard to 
the expulsion of evil spirits from the interior, by virtue 
of the holy Presence therein — a picturesque reminder 
of the mediaeval faith. 

Sunday services are held here still and farmers' 
families come from miles around. The church bell is 
not in that tower above the roof, but in a detached 
belfry a few rods distant across the way. The farmers 
tie their horses in sheds near by and then pass in 
decorously under that red-tiled gate beyond the post- 
boy. Husbands and wives part at the church door, 
for good manners require that men and women shall 
occupy different sides of the house, the men at the 
right, the women at the left. The altar stands, of 
course, at the east end ; a low railing separates it from 
the rest of the church, and behind it is a raised seat 
for the bishop when he comes. Both bread and wine 
are given to communicants at the celebration of the 
Lord's Supper, but the bread is in the form of wafers. 
The Lutheran pastor wears a long black gown with a 
stiffly starched ruff of white around his neck, and the 
theology he expounds is pretty nearly what it was in 
Luther's day — ^there is hardly a country in Europe 
where Protestant orthodoxy is more staunchly con- 
servative in matters of doctrine. The prayers, the 
Scripture lessons, the hymns, the sermon, are all in 

Position 23. Map 4. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 71 

the familiar native tongue, but they together con- 
stitute a service which seems long indeed to a 
youngster whose aching legs dangle from the hard 
wooden seat of the pew. No wonder if repressed 
Nature now and then asserts herself, boiHng over in 
the form of a childish quarrel like the one Bjornson 
describes in his country story called Synnove Sol- 
bakken. 

Mrs. Tweedie's Winter Jaunt in Norway tells about 
coming here to this very church in a season of deep 
snow. 

Now let us look again at our map of southern Nor- 
way (Map 2). About twenty miles south from Hitter- 
dal Church we see the upper end of a long, crooked 
lake, the Nordsjo. The lower end of the lake has an 
outlet into the sea. From that upper, northern end it 
is possible for a small steamboat to follow up from 
lake to river and lake to river, by a long chain of 
waterways reaching far up into the heart of the 
province of Bratsberg. It is true that now and then 
a stream is met proceeding so boisterously on its way 
over a steep incline that a boat could not breast the 
current nor brave the rocks. In that case Scandi- 
navian engineers have cut huge staircases in the rock 
alongside the tumbling stream and constructed gates 
across the stairs, then diverted part of the water into 
the new channel, forming a canal where the flow can 
be mechanically controlled. 

If we take our stand at the spot which the map 
marks 24, we can see with unusual clearness how 
such a piece of engineering is practically utilized. 
Notice that the red lines show we shall be looking: up 
the course of a small stream. 



Position 24. Map 2. 



72 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

PoBition 24. Steamboat climbing a steep bill be- 
aide the Vrang waterfall by locks in the Ban- 
dak-NordsJo Canal 

Direction — We are facing north-northwest. Sur- 
roundings — Hitterdal Church and Tinoset are ahead 
of us and off at our right, twenty to thirty miles away. 
Mount Gausta that we saw from the Maan valley 
(Position 19), is something over fifty miles away, be- 
yond that horizon straight ahead. 

Passengers on the boats almost always land as we 
have done and walk about during the time a vessel is 
making her way up or down the hill. The engineer- 
ing here is exceptionally interesting because of the 
unusual lift (80 feet), requiring, as we see, five suc- 
cessive locks. First, water was let through from that 
first lock into the basin at our feet, equalizing their 
level, the boat passed in and the gates were shut be- 
hind her. Then water was let from the second lock 
down into the first, equalizing those two levels; at 
this moment the gates have been opened and the boat 
is steaming into the second lock, to be ready for the 
third up-lockage. It will take half or three-quarters 
of an hour longer, so there is plenty of time to ex- 
plore that gleaming path, which zigzags up the steep 
side-hill at the left or to go up to the bridge and look 
off over the boiling tumult of the falls. We could 
cross the canal by a narrow footpath over any one 
of those gates. The children who live in this neigh- 
borhood are usually on the lookout for travelers, and 
offer delicious berries for sale in birch-bark baskets 
— sweet, wild strawberries in their season, raspberries, 
blueberries — a number of small fruits practically the 
same that Americans find at home. Five or ten ore 
(i. e., two or three cents) make the little vendors feel 
prosperous and happy. 

Position 24. Map 2. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 73 

The boats that go through here start from Skien, 
a seaport off behind us on the south coast of Norway, 
and they bring up a good deal of miscellaneous freight 
just as a slow local railway train might do if there 
were any railways hereabouts. (There is a railway 
connecting Skien with Christiania, 125 miles away 
at our right.) The deck of the boat over there now 
is probably crowded with wares ordered by farmers 
and country shopkeepers — barrels of sugar, casks of 
molasses and syrup, bags of coffee, rolls of cotton 
cloth, boxes of ribbons and gay-colored kerchiefs, 
crates of window-glass perhaps, some iron stoves in 
readiness for the chilly weather of early fall, oil lamps 
and oil wherewith to fill them — such things take up a 
deal of room in a small boat and passengers are some- 
times uncomfortably crowded. The return freight is 
likely to include a considerable amount of dairy 
produce. There are some copper mines up above here, 
worked by English capital. 

That house up at the head of the locks is con- 
spicuously fine with its trimmings and window-cas- 
ings painted white, just as they might be on a town 
street. Dwelling houses hereabouts are oftener quite 
unpainted, unless, perhaps, the roof may be given a 
coat of red for the sake of protecting the wood from 
the weather. 

. In Goodman's book called The Best Tour in Nor- 
zvay, the author speaks of making a journey by boat 
over this route and seeing the falls during the wait 
for up-lockage. 

After one reaches the end of this water journey 
near Dalen, seventy miles up in the interior of the 
country, horses and post-boys once more become the 
indispensable means of getting across to the western 

Position 24. Map 2. 



74 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

fjords. Distances here in southern Norway do not 
look very great on a map ; indeed, the air-Une dis- 
tance all the way from Christiania across to Bergen 
is less than two hundred miles. American railway 
trains cover the same space, e. g., between New York 
and Providence, R. I., in four hours. Here, where 
there are no railways,* the roads have to climb up 
and up steep hills, then creep down again, only to 
climb once more. No wonder the ponies, despite their 
pluck and endurance, take several days, instead of a 
few hours, to carry a traveler and his luggage over to 
the Atlantic side of the land. 

Perhaps you would like to see how it looks at a 
typical, average posting station along this route. Such 
a spot is marked on Map 2 with a red 25, about mid- 
way between Kongsberg and the western fjords. The 
shortness of the red lines indicates that we are to 
have no extensive outlook — we shall presently see why. 

Position «5. On the picturesque Telemarken road. 
Changing horses at Grundesbro shy ds- station 

Direction — We are facing north. Surroundings — 
Other wooded, rocky hills of the same character as 
the one which looms up ahead cutting off our view. 
Kongsberg and Christiania are away off at our right. 
Hardanger Fjord is still a long way off at the left. 
Far ahead over beyond that hill lie vast reaches of 
lonely heights where nobody lives, in the central part 
of the country. 

Stolkjaerres and kariols are not very comfortable 
vehicles, and, even with all the intervals of getting 
out and walking up-hill to spare the horses, a traveler 



* A railway is now building between Christiania and Berpen, but its route 
is north of where we are now. 



Position 25. Map 2. 



X()R\\■.\^■ THROUGH THIO STERI^IOSCOPE 75 

is likely to hail with relief this opportunity for a 
change and perhaps a substantial meal. At just this 
moment several travelers seem to have arrived almost 
simultaneously, and maybe not everybody can have 
fresh horses at once. The safest way, if one is really 
in haste, is to write or telephone ahead about the time 
when the horses will be needed. (See those familiar 
wires -over beyond the bridge. The telephone goes 
everywhere in this part of the country.) Mail is 
brought by a carrier in a pony cart, or, in winter, on 
skis. It is not certain that one will find the people at 
a little station like this speaking English, still it is 
always possible, so many country people have either 
been in Ainerica themselves or have had opportuni- 
ties to pick up at least a few useful phrases. If we 
wish to experiment with the Norwegian tongue, we 
might say: 

God M or gen! J eg vil saa snart som muligt have 
en Stolkjcerre og en Hest. Hvad koster Skydsen til 
nceste Station?^ 

(Good morning! I wish as soon as possible to have 
a stolkjserre and one horse. What is the cost of 
driving to the next station?)* 

If we wish merely to rest the horse and then go on 
with the same animal, w^e may perhaps take dinner 
here. We could even spend the night, for a small 
chamber or two under that sod -covered roof can 
always be spared for guests. The partition walls in- 
side a country house of this sort are usually of thin 
boards, and the floor is only partially covered with 
rugs or pieces of carpeting. The furniture and table- 
ware are plain, but neatly kept. A substantial meal 

•Pronounced approximately as follows: "Goo Mom! Yea vill so snart 
some moolikt ha en stool'-chair-re og en hest. Va (a as in father) kos'-ter 
shys'sen till ness'-te sta-shoon'?" 



Position 25. Map 2. 



76 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

can be had for less than a quarter of a dollar. 
Potatoes are pretty sure to be obtainable, with fresh 
eggs and ham or salt pork, if we like — possibly sau- 
sages. There will probably be fresh berries of some 
sort served with cream, and well-made coffee. The 
bread will be of rye or barley or a mixture of the 
two, and cheese is sure to be in evidence — mysost, 
most likely, that is, a sweetish brown stuff made from 
goat's milk. It is not bad when one is familiar with 
it, but many foreigners have amusing experiences 
learning to like it. Norwegian housewives make it 
in bars or oblong cakes, which look Hke soap, and the 
color of the stuff is really so like old "Brown Wind- 
sor" that a stranger might easily misunderstand its 
nature. They tell in Christiania of a Norwegian who 
sent some mysost as a present to a German friend, 
and received in due time a letter saying "the soap is 
very nice indeed, though somehow we have great 
difficulty in making it lather!" Special instructions 
followed. 

Before these travelers proceed on their way they 
will register in the station Dagbog (day-book), stating 
how many persons were in the party and what was 
required in the way of horses and vehicles. The post- 
ing service is all subject to government supervision, 
and its details are supposed to be kept continuously on 
record. 

Seeing the place to-day, a traveler from New Eng- 
land might be reminded of V^ermont. It is Hke the 
Green Mountain region, "only more so!" Just such 
rocky hillside fields are in Vermont, just such stone- 
wall fences with planks to bar the gate spaces, just 
such mountain brooks and winding little rivers. If 
emigrating Norwegians went to settle in northern New 



Position 25. Map 2. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 77 

England instead of on the vast, fertile prairies of 
Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska, they would find 
themselves much more at home. 

A lonely place this must be when the midsummer 
tourist season is over and the road little traveled save 
on neighborhood errands. The winter lasts so long- 
it takes every bit of hay that can possibly be gathered 
to feed horses, cows and goats through the cold sea- 
son. The house is modern and well-built, and roar- 
ing wood fires keep things comfortable even when the 
shrill squeaking of the snow under sledge-runners 
outside tells of a temperature far below zero. 

As we go on, with a stolkjaerre and post-boy, we 
pass waterfalls innumerable. They say that in some 
parts of Norway one might see a hundred, big and 
little, in the course of a single day's drive. Streams 
are continually running down from mountain springs 
and melting snow banks; the ponds that they form 
in the hollows spill their liquid surplus and send new 
streams racing to find still lower hollows, and so on, 
till the country is well-nigh covered with irregular 
water-chains set with ponds for beads. Map 5, to 
which we should turn now, shows a district a little 
farther west than our last position. Near the lower 
right corner of Map 5 a red 26 marks a spot beside 
the highway where we can see one beautiful knot in 
such a water-chain. 

Position 26. Halt of a stolkjaerre beside the foam- 
ing Itittle Rjukan Falls 

Direction — We are facing about northwest, i. e., in 
the direction of the sea, but the dividing height of 
land has still to be climbed, for, as a rule, the greatest 
elevations in Norway are along the ragged Atlantic 

Positioo 26. Map 5. 



78 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

shore. Surroundings — Steep hillsides with wild 
flowers growing among the rocks and in openings 
among the trees. 

They call these the Lille Rjukan (Little Smoking) 
Falls, as a suggestion of their kinship to the 
thunderous waterfall which we saw over near Mount 
Gausta (Positions 20, 21, 22). 

Now that we are near the horse we can see better 
some of the details of the harness. The shafts are 
attached only at one point on each side. There are 
no tugs (traces) ; no way is provided to hold back 
a load as the horse goes down a steep hill, save only 
that attachment of the shaft. The short cutting of 
the horse's mane so that it stands up, pompadour 
fashion, is according to almost universal custom. 
Most of the native horses are cream-colored, like this 
one, or a sort of dun mouse-color. Tenth century 
Rolf, who sailed away from Norway to France and 
shaped later European history by his venture,* is 
said by tradition to have been too heavy for riding a 
Norwegian horse. Most of the animals are, however, 
considerably smaller than the continental breeds, so 
the old rover may not have l^een gigantic in stature 
after all. 

The woman in the road is a farmer's wife on her 
way to visit a sister at a mountain dairy (sceter) above 
here. The box which she carries slung in a big bag 
contains a live fowl. Young and middle-aged women 
walk for miles alone over country roads like this, 
sometimes knitting as they go in order to utilize the 
time thriftily. There is really nothing to be afraid 
of. Bears used to be common in these parts, but now 
they are seldom seen, and the few people one might 

* See page 247. 



Position 26. Map 5. 



XORWAV THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 79 

meet would be likely to be just plain, decent country 
neighbors. As a matter of fact, a solitary pedestrian 
would be more likely to be afraid of supernatural 
creatures than of anything real and tangible. A good 
many country people about here do believe still in 
ghosts and queer, unearthly creatures of forest and 
mountain. In all probability this very woman if we 
could talk with her (unfortunately she speaks only 
Norwegian) could tell us some very **creepy" stories 
of things which happened to people her mother used 
to know ! Without doubt she herself has the wooden 
stick with which she stirs the porridge at home 
marked with a cross to keep the milk from curdling! 

Our road now steadily rises, for we have soon to 
cross the mountain height which forms the divide or 
watershed between the Skagerrak and the North 
Atlantic. As we gradually reach higher and higher 
levels, the soil grows thinner until even Norwegian 
thrift can do very little with it. The lakes and streams, 
however, are full of fish, and wild fowl are so plenti- 
ful as to call a good many sportsmen to the district 
during the hunting season. Suppose w^e pause again 
at a certain little inn which is a popular resort for 
devotees of the gun and fishing-rod. Its location (be- 
side a mountain lake) is marked 27. Be sure to look 
it up on ]\Iap 5, just a little northwest of our last 
position. The diverging red lines say we shall look 
off some distance across the surrounding country. 

Position 27, Gossip at a wayside inn at Botten 
overlooking Voxli I,ake. View towards the 
Hankeli Mountains 

Direction — We face now about west-southwest. 
Surroundings — Barren heights rise behind us, their 



Positton 27. Map 5. 



80 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

summits streaked with snow. There is no village 
here — only one or two farms are within several miles. 

That sod-covered roof with the neat ornamental 
railing around it is the inn proper. The more roughly 
constructed building just below our feet is an older 
house which stood here before the inn was built — 
they use it now for a kitchen. The prettily picturesque 
affair with the balconies and decorative gables is a 
sort of annex to the inn, containing bedrooms for 
guests. Its general design is like that of some of 
the beautiful old stabbur (storehouses) that one still 
sees in many parts of Norway. Farmers in old times 
often made their stabbur much more beautiful than 
their dwelling houses, perhaps on the same principle 
which keeps a kitchen table plain and bare, while a 
chest for best clothes and fine linen might be decorated 
with hand-carved patterns. In several places nowa- 
days such old stabbur are utilized for bedrooms when 
the rising tide of summer travel makes extra chambers 
needed. In this particular case the building is not 
actually old. It is a modern construction, but the 
builder had a happy thought and gave it a form like 
the most admired old models. 

All three roofs are sod-covered. That is the 
favorite finish for a roof in this district. Sheets of 
birch bark or something of that sort are fastened over 
the boards, then a layer of sod is placed upon it, roots 
up, then another layer with roots down ; the two layers 
interlock and form a fairly close, weather-tight cover- 
ing. If it does spring a leak, it can usually be mended 
with a patch of turf or a sprinkling of additional 
earth. Evidently that kitchen roof, being the oldest 
of the three, has had to be repaired several times. 

These girls are country born and bred, employed 
at the inn. Their wages would be considered pre- 

Position 27. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 81 

pobterously small in America, but money is scarce here 
and every krone (twenty-seven cents) is a welcome 
addition to the little hoard which will some day buy 
a wedding outfit. Perhaps they may marry and settle 
down somewhere in this very province. As likely as 
not destiny may lead them over-seas to end their days 
in proud proprietorship of comfortable wheat farms in 
America. 

The embroidery on that long white apron was 
doubtless done by the owner's fingers during long 
winter evenings. Girls like these all know how to 
knit their own stockings and long woolen mittens 
(one-fingered gloves) for winter wear. Many of them 
can spin too, and weave coarse homespun, such as 
their dark-colored skirts are made of. The bodices 
they wear over the white blouses or shirt-waists are 
of red woolen stuff. • All their clothing is of strong, 
durable material, which lasts a long time, and, as 
fashions here remain the same from one year to 
another, a Sunday gown lasts almost a lifetime. White 
garments, like blouses, aprons and underclothes, are 
energetically washed in tubs in a little building 
separate from the house, and then smoothed by press- 
ing under heavy wooden rollers — a device like the 
''mangle" familiar to British housewives. 

The sport hereabouts is considered very good. A 
number of books have been written by British authors 
about Norwegian angling, bird shooting and reindeer 
stalking, all entertaining to a sympathetic reader. 
Several such books are mentioned on pages 353-354. 
Hunters who go of¥ up in the mountains for several 
days at a time usually take professional guides along 
with them, for even in midsummer blinding storms 
of snow and sleet often sweep over the heights, and 
one needs to be thoroughly familiar with the country 

Position 27. Map 5. 



82 NORWAY THROUGT-I THE STEREOSCOPE 

in order not to get into trouble. There is seldom a 
time when those ridges over beyond the lake are 
entirely clear of snow. 

As a tourist continues this journey he climbs still 
higher and higher. The road leads up over bleak, 
treeless heights, like those which we have just seen 
in the distance, and reaches an altitude of more than 
3,700 feet. Moisture-laden winds from the Atlantic, 
blowing in over the land, are often so chilled in sweeping 
over the height, that what would be a gentle, drizzling 
rain down in Bergen, turns up here into a shrieking 
snow-storm. Thus it happens that we find a most 
un-summer-like landscape effect at the spot where we 
pause for our next outlook. Find the place marked 
28 (on Map 5), a Httle west of the Botten inn. It is 
right on the main traveled highway. 

Position 28. Digging a road through the deep July 
snowdrifts upon Dyreskard Pass 

Surroundings — Just deep snowbanks and ragged 
ledges. There are no trees or shrubs of any account 
in this vicinity, though mosses grow among the rocks. 

Evidently the wind led this snow a lively dance, so 
irregular is its distribution now — these huge drifts 
accumulating right here, while parts of the road ahead 
were swept bare and clean. The photographer who 
went over this route before us was caught in the 
storm when the air was so thick with flying flakes 
that he could not see as far ahead as that steep 
slope opposite us now. The cold was intense, and 
the wind so searching that the post-boy advised a 
halt and a rest in a small hut only a few rods from here 
around that turn at the right. A fire was soon blaz- 
ing on an open hearth in that hut, and, after getting 



Position 28. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 83 

well warmed, the travelers felt better courage for fac- 
ing the rest of the storm. 

The men we see here now are farmers who "work 
out" their share of the public road tax, paying in labor 
instead of cash — a common custom in many parts of 
the country. 

A part of the way through this gigantic snowdrift 
the men did not cut out the whole depth of snow, but 
merely cut through it. Let us go down inside the 
hollow through which that stolkjaerre has to pass. 

Position gg. J^ooking through a great snow-tunnel 
on a. midsummer journey over Dyreakard Pass 

We do not see the full length of the tunnel ; that is 
impossible, as it bends so that the entire passage is 
not visible from any one point. Nearly every sum- 
mer such a tunnel has to be cut here, and even under 
the full blaze of July and August sunshine the walls 
and roof remain intact for several weeks. (This par- 
ticular one caved in sometime in August.) 

Seeing that this sort of thing is possible in July, 
we can more easily imagine what midwinter storms 
must be up on these lonely heights when the Wind and 
Cold have everything their own way. It is not strange 
that there should be an old Norwegian legend about 
how the earliest civilization came to an end long ago 
under such a pall of heavy white. We can read all 
about it to-day in various translations of the ancient 
Eddas. The gods had known that sometime the end 
of the First Age of the World would come: at last 
it did come, for there settled down upon the earth 
the terrible Fimbul winter. Three years it snowed 
without ceasing. Three years more it snowed and 
snowed and snowed. One great wolf swallowed the 



Position 29, Map 5. 



84 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

sun. Another swallowed the moon. Ragnarok, the 
awful Twilight of the Gods, settled down over all.* 

Continuing along the mountain road you begin to 
descend, and in three or four miles reach regions 
which, though still lonesome and without trees, have 
enough soil to support a scanty crop of grass. Look 
once more at Map 5 and find the spot marked 30. 
There we are to have our first sight of an establish- 
ment such as figures in almost every tale of Norwegian 
country life — a summer dairy up on the mountain. 

Position 30. Pretty Norwegian girls tending cows 
and goats on the HankeJi Mountains, Midtlaeger 
Saeter 

Direction — We are facing northeast. For seventy 
miles or so beyond that bleak horizon line there are 
no farms, only desolate heaths and silent lakes, where 
fish and wild fowl and wandering herds of reindeer 
have things pretty much their own way. Surround- 
ings — Immediately around us are pasture lands where 
other cows and goats are nibbhng the short grass. 

These girls live at Roldal, several miles away down 
the mountain ; we shall presently see the village from 
which they came. According to the universal custom 
in this part of Norway, they have come up here to 
spend the better part of the summer, taking care 
of the cows and goats and making up butter and 
cheese on the spot, in order to leave untouched all the 
available grass in fields near home. The winter lasts 
so long that farmers have to plan with the wisest 
foresight and thrift, in order to provide enough fodder 
for the live stock. Perhaps these women-folks may 
take turns going down home now and then for a 



Consult books on Norse Mythology, mentioned on page 355. 



FHjshton ^0. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 85 

brief holiday, but ofteiier they stay several weeks at 
a stretch, and friends come up on Sunday for a 
neighborly visit. 

The rude stone hut at the left is a storehouse where 
butter and cheese are kept until it is time to go 
down home at the end of the season. In old times 
such a cabin served as a temporary home also, but 
these are prosperous people, and that little timber 
cottage now comprises lodgings and dairy. Every- 
thing is bare and plain to the last degree, but scrupu- 
lously clean according to farmhouse standards. There 
is a stone hearth on which a roaring fire can be built 
for scalding these milk-buckets, for cooking oatmeal 
porridge, or for keeping the place cosy through a 
hard storm. The bedsteads are bunks built into the 
side of the room and furnished with beds of hay or 
straw. 

Norwegian people are famous for their hospitality, 
and never more so than at a place like this. Over 
and over again travelers have told about the kindly 
reception given to strangers who came tired and 
hungry. The baggage brought up from home weeks 
ago included plenty of Hadhrod (bread of oats and 
barley in thin cakes), bacon and coffee; milk, butter 
and cheese are naturally plentiful. The work is con- 
fining, for the cows and goats must always be watched 
to prevent their wandering off into dangerous places, 
and the labor of milking is itself no small matter, 
preliminary to churning and cheese-making; however, 
these young women have probably brought knitting 
or embroidery with them to fill available scraps of 
time. The animals are called together at night by 
yodeling somewhat as Swiss cowherds do it, and by 
blowing on long horns made of birch bark. One 
such yodel has been put into English in this wise : — 

Position 30. Map 5. 



86 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

"Come children all 

That hear my call, — 

Brynhilda fair 

With nut-brown hair! 

Come, little Rose, 

Ere day shall close; 

And Birchen Bough, 

My own dear cow; 

And Morning Pride; 

And Sunnyside ; 

Come children dear, 

For night draws near. 
Come, children !" 
A walled yard or corral is set off close by the 
house, in which the animals are shut up over night. 

Du Chaillu, the author of the Land of the Midnight 
Sun, gives a pleasant account of his own visit to a 
saeter like this years ago, and the generous kindness 
with which he was treated. Norse writers of country 
stories almost always tell more or less about life at 
a place of this sort ; it is a nearly universal experience 
of farmers' daughters, for even those who are so 
well-to-do that they are not obliged to share in the 
work like the "picnic" part of it, and often join the 
others for the fun. Bjornson's Synnbve Solhakken 
has an interesting chapter where Synnove and Ingrid 
come up to a place like this. Boyesen's Gimnar gives 
a charmingly poetic account of the long climb up to 
Ingeborg Rimul's saeter, of the work and the strange 
fascination of out-of-door life so far up on the 
heights. 

Mrs. Tweedie, who wrote A Winter Jaunt in Nor- 
way, had a desire to see what such a place would seem 
like in the dead of winter, and persuaded some oblig- 
ing Norse friends to get up a cold-weather picnic for 
her benefit in a saeter farther east in this same province. 
The experience is worth reading. 



Position 30. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 87 

Leaving the S2eter girls at their work you go on 
now down the road which they too will travel at the 
end of the summer, with the cows and goats and the ac- 
cumulated stock of dairy stuff. In three-quarters of 
an hour or so you reach a turn of the road where 
every traveler pauses to look ofif. Find the place on 
Map 5. It is marked 31, and the red lines, as we see, 
indicate an outlook of several miles, including part of 
a distant lake. 



Position 31, Great xigaag loops of road descending 
from Dyreakard Pass; west to mountain-walled 
I,ake Roldal 

Direction — The map shows that we are looking 
nearly west. Surroundings — The saeter and the dairy 
maids are away up behind us. The snow-drifted Pass 
is still farther behind us. 

Here we are actually over the ''divide," and indeed 
it seems a steep enough plunge we shall have to make 
when we go on. The irregular slope is in fact far 
steeper than it looks from here, for our outlook from 
above foreshortens the grade of the road and mini- 
mizes its difficulty. At the first glance one is pretty 
sure to underestimate both the distances and the steep- 
ness of the grade. Each loop is really a great deal 
higher than its predecessor, one practically piled on 
top of the other. If we notice the apparent size of 
the horse and stolkjasrre down there on the highway, 
it will help us to realize how far it is below this 
mountain shoulder from which we are looking off. 
It was a tremendous task to build that road and set 
up the guard-stones — a tremendous task also to keep 
it (as they do) in good repair. But Norway's natural 
scenery is practically one of her most available re- 
position 31. Map 5. 



88 NORWAY TI-IROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

sources for money-making, and in the more enterpris- 
ing districts people are generally awake to the de- 
sirability of encouraging summer tourist-travel as a 
source of income for themselves. 

Goodman's Best Tour in Norzvay tells how the 
author came up here from Roldal and took "short cuts 
across the windings of the road, which, as we looked 
back, lay like a coiled ribbon upon the ground behind 
us/' This is what he saw ! 

The general formation of the Scandinavian 
peninsula has been described by geographers as re- 
sembling that of a long wave. Beginning at the com- 
paratively low shores of the Baltic over in Sweden, four 
hundred miles away behind us, the land gradually rises 
higher and higher and higher like a billow that swells 
bigger and rounder — then, like the billow, breaks into 
a confusion of shattered forms just as it reaches the 
Atlantic. Here we begin to see the picturesque force 
of the analogy, for we have now passed the height of 
land, and indeed salt tides are sweeping at this very 
moment along Aakre Fjord only six or eight miles in 
a straight line beyond that ragged, broken line of 
mountain-barrier above Lake Roldal. 

See how the character of the country has changed 
since we came down over the Pass. Though the 
mountain framework is still so Wild and grandiose in 
effect, spruces, pines and firs find soil enough for 
vigorous growth. 

As one follows the road still farther down toward 
the head of the lake, he presently finds cosy hollows 
where farmers cultivate little fields and build 
permanent homes. The red 32 on the map marks 
where we are to pause for a few minutes in company 
with a Norse farmer's family. 



Position 31. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 89 

Position 32. A farmer's family making bay in a 
sunny Aeld between the mountains, Rbldal 

Direction — Northeast. It is the forenoon sun that 
is shining on us. Surroundings — Wooded hills like 
those ahead, with scattered farmhouses along the 
highway. 

All through Norway it is customary to cure the 
hay in this way on tall racks instead of on the ground. 
The sun and the breeze certainly do have a better 
chance at it, so there is less danger of losing a crop 
thrgugh dampness after the mowing. Every farmer 
keeps on hand quantities of long, slender poles for 
making such racks. Other poles are fastened across 
them by withes or pins in long horizontal parallels ; 
sometimes wire forms the parallels ; the hay is pushed 
between the horizontal bars, a handful at a time, be- 
ginning at the bottom and continuing till the fragrant 
wall of green is as high as the workers can reach. 
(That elderly woman has nearly reached the limit of 
her own strong arms.) The wooden rakes were prob- 
ably made at home during long winter evenings by 
the men of the family — most Norwegians are clever 
with the knife. When the hay is perfectly cured it 
will be carried off and stored in the loft of the barn — 
or barns, if the establishment is a large one. The 
carts they use for transporting the hay are, to Ameri- 
can eyes, curiously small and low, with wheels no 
bigger than a toy wagon, such as the chubby urchin 
might have for a plaything. We shall see such a 
cart later, over near Olden (Position 64), when we 
reach the Nordfjord district. 

The people here speak only Norwegian. The young 
women may both belong to the family, but it is not 
certain. It is here as it used to be a few generations 
ago in a New England farming district — the daughter 

Position 32. Map 5. 



90 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

of a farmer in modest circumstances often works for 
wages in the family of a neighbor where there is more 
work to be done, and mistress and maid share the 
toil without much evident distinction of rank. Under- 
neath the apparent democracy there is, however, in 
many cases a strong consciousness of social rank, 
based on property qualifications. A man who owns 
his land and buildings is the superior of another man 
to whom he leases a part of the estate or an adjoin- 
ing estate. Bright eyes and a winsome manner are a 
girl's most valued assets, still, everything else being- 
equal, the girl whose father has the sunniest acres and 
the biggest barns is likely to be the belle of the neigh- 
borhood. In any case girls learn to do all sorts of 
housework and lend a hand in the field besides, out- 
door air and exercise giving most of them robust 
strength. Their favorite social amusement is dancing 
evenings and Sunday afternoons — strictly religious 
they all are, but the custom of the country encourages 
any innocent recreation after church is over for the 
day. Young people make the most of their oppor- 
tunity for friendly visiting. 

Country girls like these have practically the same 
freedom as American girls in the matter of youthful 
friendships and courtships, but it is still customary 
for the father, mother or some elderly relative of the 
young man to pay a formal call and make the defi- 
nite offer of marriage, addressing it to the girl's 
parents or guardians. Sometimes, of course, match- 
making parents take these matters arbitrarily into 
their own hands, just as in other lands, and Romeo 
and Juliet have a sad time. Oftener the affair has 
really been all decided beforehand between the lovers, 
and the formal asking in marriage is merely a decorous 
recognition of the claims of etiquette. 

Position 32. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 91 

Anybody who knows Gunnar, that delightful story 
written years ago by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen,* will 
be reminded at once by this solemn youngster of the 
little Norse lad who used to play go riding, astride of 
a beam in his grandmother's cottage, and of the way 
he used to devour her tales about the enchanted 
princess and the three-headed Trold and the beauti- 
ful, mysterious Hulder with a scarlet bodice and long 
golden hair. The simple country idyl is well worth 
reading, for the insight it gives into the inner life of 
a shy child who awakens to the fascinating reality of 
life beyond the confines of the little valley at home. 

Life in this particular valley is really much less 
isolated than it was where Gunnar dreamed his boyish 
dreams, for a little farther down that road which we 
see leading along the hillside is a village — only a small 
one, to be sure, but still a considerable social center 
for Norway where scattered homesteads are the rule. 
Consult the same map that we have lately been using 
(Map 5) and the encircled 33 will show where we are 
to stand to look over the village. The length of the 
red lines extending from the 33 promises a view con- 
siderably more extensive than the last. 



Position 33, Pretty mountain- walled village and 
lake of Roldal in rugged western Norway 

Direction — We are looking southwest, i. e., to- 
wards the sea, though the distant mountains shut it off. 
Surroundings — Behind us and at both sides rise high 
hills of the same general character as those which we 
saw from our last two positions. 



* A distinguished Norwegian-Amencan for many years a professor at Cor- 
nell and Columbia Universities, New York. 



Position Z3. Map .5 



92 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Here we find the outlet of those brawUng moun- 
tain streams that we saw racing down the rocky 
slopes off behind us when we stood above the slyng- 
iiing — the road with the big loops in its own course. 
Those ragged little islands in the upper end of the 
lake are accumulations of sand, gravel and loose peb- 
bles brought down partly by ancient glaciers and 
partly by spring freshets when the overfull streams 
tear stuff out of their own banks with the energy 
that comes from heavier descending volumes of water. 
Indeed all the soil now forming the fields down there 
in the valley must have been gradually brought down 
in times past, either by bigger streams or by the slow, 
heavy plowshare of some prehistoric glacier, sliding 
down on its way toward the sea. It took thousands of 
years to get this valley into such condition that human 
homes could be established here ! 

It would be interesting if we could know whether 
the girls whom we saw at the sseter away up on the 
Haukeli mountains came from one of these very 
houses now in sight; at all events they belong in this 
parish — they said so.* It was in order to save for 
winter the grass in some of these fields that they had 
taken the stock up there for the summer. 

Several Roldal families have sseters up on the 
Haukeli mountains. Paul Du Chaillu many years 
ago traveled through this region and visited at one 
such cabin-dairy managed by girls from Roldal, one 
of them the sister of his guide. He told about it in 
The Land of the Midnight Sun and printed some in- 
teresting letters which were later written to him by 
the young people after they had come home to the 
village here. 



* i. e., to the photographer. 
Position 33. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 93 

By the way, though this is not the "midnight sun" 
which is now shining on the roadway (on the con- 
trary, as we know we are facing southwest, it is evi- 
dently in the forenoon), those shadows seem surpris- 
ingly long until we remember that we are in about the 
same latitude as St. Petersburg and Cape Farewell. 
The sun naturally cannot sweep so high in the sky 
here as it does at home — that accounts for the longer 
shadows. 

That large frame building directly beside the high- 
way is, as we readily infer, a hotel. There are in fact 
several good inns here, for the place is visited every 
summer by increasing numbers of travelers. There is 
good trout fishing in the lake, and in streams that flow 
into it. Roldal is a larger village than it appears to 
be from this point of view — the parish church and a 
number of houses are out of range at this moment, 
but we pause here in order to get this superb view 
over the lake with the rocky Holmenut and Roldals- 
saaten standing guard beyond, their heads against 
the sky. 

Roldal church used, centuries ago, to be famous 
in its way. It owns an ancient wooden crucifix, which, 
tradition says, was found by a fisherman floating in 
the water of a fjord a few miles away. According to 
local legend the people found that its touch worked 
miracles for the sick, and its fame spread far through 
the countryside, so that devout believers used to make 
long and weary journeys here to seek help. These 
pilgrimages, which were made at midsummertide, con- 
tinued until the year 1835, when they were prohibited 
by governmental authority. As the result of a fair 
that was held at the same time, much worldliness de- 
veloped in the course of years, and hence the prohibi- 
tion. Tradition still says concerning the old market 

Positioq 33. M^p 5. 



94 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

place : "Here many a dance has been turned, many a 
horse wind-broken, and many a hero drubbed." The 
crucifix still remains, but certainly works no miracles 
to-day.* 

The young women whom we saw in the hayfield 
(Position 32) had doubtless been to school in the 
village here when they were little girls, and the shy 
small boy will come here in his turn. Country schools 
cannot, of course, keep up to the high educational 
standard of Christiania, but they are good so far as 
they go; the children do at least learn to read and 
write and reckon simple arithmetical problems, so 
they all possess the key to further learning if taste 
and opportunity lead that way. * It would be con- 
sidered a serious disgrace to allow children, no matter 
how poor, to grow up without at least as much as 
that in the way of education. 

The constantly increasing volume of summer travel 
through this region is becoming a very important 
source of local revenue. The Norwegians, like the 
Swiss, are thrifty folk, conservative by instinct, and 
yet not so conservative but that they will put them- 
selves to vast trouble if a new enterprise recommends 
itself as practically worth while. Some of the best 
road building in Europe has been done within the last 
twenty years here in Norway for the sake of making 
certain natural beauties of the land more accessible to 
foreign tourists, with pockets full of money. One 
such new road we have already seen, forming a nar- 
row shelf above the thundering Rjukan Fos (Position 
20). Another remarkable highway, partly the widen- 
ing of an earlier road and partly quite new, follows 



♦Major Ferryman's In the Norseman's Land gives an interesting account 
of his own visit here a few years ago. 



Position 33. Map 5. 



XOKWAY THKOUGH THE STEREOSCOPE VO 

the outlet of Lake Roldal down through a wild ravine 
between high mountains south of the lake, on its way 
to the sea. The general course of our journey would 
lead us in nearly the opposite direction, but we will 
make a special detour to see the Bratlandsdal road. 
The map includes the valley away do-wn near its 
southern margin. Before we reach the most pic- 
turesque pieces of engineering, let us pause for a 
minute beside a humble peasant home. The map 
marks our standpoint 34. Notice the red lines indi- 
cate that we shall look across a small stream — the out- 
let of Lake Roldal. 

Position 34. Old log bouses down in the Brat- 
landsdal with trees growing on their sod-oovered 
roofs 

Direction — We are facing south, down stream. 
Surroundings — High, gloomy mountain walls like the 
one just ahead. 

We can hardly find to-day in Norway anything more 
primitive than these old structures, rudely fastened 
together by hewing out matched notches near the 
timber ends, fitting the logs together at right angles, 
and pounding them into place with heavy mallets. A 
few big iron nails would be sufficient to make the walls 
stand secure as need be around corner posts well 
driven into the ground. Evidently this nearer struc- 
ture is not used for a dwelling (more likely it is a 
shelter for the cow and goats), but in old times, 
with that gable tightly boarded and the cracks stuffed 
with moss and hay, it would have been a shelter not 
to be despised on a cold, wet night. True, there is 
no sign of a chimney, but even that does not prove 
much. A few generations ago many farmers in the 
remotest corners of the country built the household 

Position 34. Map 5 



96 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

fire on a big stone hearth in one corner of the Hving 
room and let the smoke find its way out of a hole in 
the roof above. 

This ancient roof, covered with heavy sod, was 
made on the same plan as the smooth, tidy one we saw 
at Grundesbro (Position 25), only here the roof 
blanket is so thick and so old that not only grass, but 
young trees actually grow out of its soil. A good 
many weeds were naturally started in the soil when 
the first layer of sod was put on there years ago, and 
every time the roof has been mended with a patch of 
sod or a handful of dirt, more seeds have sown them- 
selves or even been thrown up there in order to en- 
courage the growth of a tough mat of interlacing 
roots. It is not at all extraordinary to see a goat up 
on such a roof — the little beasts have sharp eyes for 
the discovery of every toothsome bit of green. 

Boys and girls like these young folks here expect 
to have some tasks every day — watching the goat, 
drawing water, fetching wood to boil the porridge- 
kettle, and things of that sort, but they have a good 
deal of fun besides. Every boy enjoys fishing and 
hunting foxes and squirrels. Little girls here, as in 
other lands, treasure gay bits of decorated crockery 
and play at housekeeping. Wild berries are abundant in 
sunny clearings in the edge of the woods. To be 
dressed in Sunday best clothes and go up to Roldal to 
church is a great occasion, and quite exciting on ac- 
count of the number of other people to be met there. 
In winter, when the sun does not rise over the moun- 
tains till after the middle of the forenoon and then 
sleepily goes down behind other mountains before 
the middle of the afternoon, the long hours by fire- 
light or candle-light serve a boy for learning to whit- 
tle and fit tos^ether farm tools or to carve wooden 



Position 34. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 97 

trays and bowls. The small maiden has a chance to 
become early expert with her knitting needles. And, 
if they are as fortunate as the children in Norse stories, 
there is probably some older person willing to tell long, 
rambling tales of adventure, of ghosts and of gobUns. 
These children may never have heard of *'Little Red 
Riding-hood," but most likely they have heard eerie 
tales of "the Hulder" — a siren-like witch whose de- 
light it is to cast a spell on some human being and 
keep him wandering, wandering, wandering through 
the woods and over the barren moors, unable to get 
back home. The Hulder, it is told, sometimes comes 
to farmhouses, even to village festivals, in search of 
victims. She looks like a pretty young woman with 
fair hair, but she has a long tail like a cow and that 
often betrays her by showing beneath the border of 
her petticoats. Gunnar's grandmother told him all 
about the Hulder and how one youth in old times was 
saved by hearing the church-bell ring just as he was 
being lured away.* 

'Then saw I the form of the Hulder fair 
Vanish as mist in the morning air. 
With the last toll of the Sabbath bell 
Gone was the Hulder and broken the spell. 

O, young lads and maidens, beware, beware, 

In the darksome woods ! 
The treacherous Hulder is playing there 

In the darksome woods !" 

Children like these almost never beg for money. 
No matter how scanty may be the means of the 
family, a rigid tradition of self-respect forbids every- 
thing of that sort. However, most little Norwegians 



See the stor>' by H. H. Boyesen, before mentioned. 



Position 34. Maps 



98 NORWAY TTIROl^GTI THE STEREOSCOPE 

are human and like as well as anybody else to get a 
few ore"^ by selling berries or opening gates or per- 
forming similar services. The customary form of ac- 
knowledgment is a shy Mange tak ("many thanks") 
and an offer to shake hands. There is hardly a place 
in the world where everyday etiquette involves so 
much handshaking as here in Norw^ay. 

The remarkable part of the valley road is a little 
farther down, where the ravine narrows sharply, its 
walls holding very little soil — mostly just bare rock. 
If you read Goodman's Best Tour in Norivay, you 
will find it all described, but better than reading is the 
chance to see it with your own eyes at the point 
marked 35 on the map. There is no outlook to any 
considerable distance; the "lay of the land" forbids. 

Position 55. The wonderfnl Bratlandsdal road, 
blasted through mountain walls of solid rock 

Direction — We are looking back northeasterly, to- 
ward Roldal. Surroundings — Precipitous cliffs, like 
these on both sides below, and overhanging between 
us and the sky. 

For nearly a mile the road is a succession of 
gloomily picturesque places like this : in one place 
there is a complete tunnel. Part of the way the ravine 
is so narrow, you could throw a stone across to the 
opposite wall. The little river is racing along through 
a rocky channel down at our right. This crevice for 
the highway was blasted out of the solid cHff, the 
workmen who made the drills and set the fuses being 
lowered by ropes from a vantage point higher up in 



The ore is a copper coin worth a quarter of a cent. 



Position 35. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 99 

the mountain-side, above our heads. The labor, of 
course, occupied several seasons' time, but (a won- 
derful thing to relate of a public work anywhere, even 
in Norseland) it is said that the total cost — about 
$100,000, came out within two hundred dollars of the 
original estimate ! Of course, a good many tax-payers 
contributed their share in the form of personal labor. 
The investment will certamly be a profitable one for 
Norway. The road has become widely celebrated ; 
every year more and more people ride through here 
on their way up-country after landing from a steamer 
at Stavanger (see the map), or else make a special 
side-trip down here as we ourselves have done. 

(Just before the photographer passed through here, 
a landslide or earth-avalanche had swept down the 
mountain-side not far away and temporarily filled the 
road with rocks and earth ; pony and travelers had to 
pick their way over it as best they could. The dam- 
age was soon repaired.) 

Returning to Roldal, or rather to a point on the 
west side of the lake, about two miles this side of 
Roldal village, we will push on northwesterly toward 
the sea. Part of the way one climbs up from the lake 
in great loops and windings somewhat like those he 
descends when approaching from the east side. ( Posi- 
tion 31). Lake Roldal lies 1,225 feet above sea level. 
In order to reach the fjord or arm of the sea, to 
which we are bound, the road has first to climb up 
over an intervening mountain wall two thousand feet 
higher still. At last it begins to descend at the other 
side of the mountain barrier. 

Be sure to consult Map 5 at this point, it will be 
so much more interesting to know just where we are 
and what we are seeing when we take our next posi- 

Posftfoo 35. Map 5 

tOFC. 



100 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

tion. The spot where we are to stand beside the 
highway is marked 36. See how the red Unes reach 
off down the valley, ending against a huge, snow-cov- 
ered plateau called the Folgefond. 

Position 36, Travelers on a mountain road through 
the wild ravine of Seljestad, noithwest to snowy 
Folgefond 

Direction — We know from the map that we are 
looking toward the sea, though still in the heart of 
the mountains. The farther side of that snow-cov- 
ered wall drains off into the salt sea. Surroundings — 
Behind us and on both sides are nearly barren, craggy 
mountains like those walling in the valley ahead. 

These tourists have come up from Odde to which 
we are bound. (By the way, now that we see one 
of those stolkjserres from the rear we have a better 
chance to see how the post-boy rides. Sometimes he 
merely stands on the part of the floor which projects 
Ijehind.) We notice that the rule of the road is to 
keep to the right when meeting another team — it is 
like the American custom rather than the English. 
Odde is half a day's ride farther on, beyond the 
height around which the gray ribbon of highway bends 
to the right. 

The view from this point where we are now is a 
favorite with travelers — indeed, in its own way, it is 
one of the most striking in this part of the country, 
with these gray, rock-ribbed mountains near by 
streaked with green vegetation, the little green lake 
gleaming down there in its bed Hke a brilliant jewel, 
and that dazzling white fringe hanging over the lofty 
summit of the long, level mountain wall which rises 
against the sky before us. The summit of the Folge- 
fond (fond means "snow field") is 5,425 feet — i. e., 



Position S6. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 101 

more than a mile — above the level of the sea beyond. 
The plateau of which we now see a part is over twenty 
miles long, covering an area of one hundred square 
miles without any distinct peak. There are many such 
fonds in Norway, and some plateaus somewhat simi- 
lar in cut which lack the summer coat of snow and 
ice. It looks easy to believe what the topographers 
tell us, that about a third of the land area of the king- 
dom is 2,000 feet or more above sea-level. 

As one proceeds down the valley, the mountain 
brooks along the way are too many to number; every 
height has to send down its contributions somewhere, 
over the cliffs or through the ravines. There are two 
places between here and the village of Odde which 
are particularly well known to summer tourists and 
whose photographs are often used to illustrate books 
of travel. One we find presently on the left side of 
the road. The map marks at 37 the place where a 
waterfall comes down over a hillside. We are to go 
on a few rods past the fall and climb a steep bank at 
the opposite side of the road, from which a particu- 
larly good view can be had, looking back. 

Position sf, Mspelandsfos, one of the loveliest 
waterfalls in all Scandinavia — a gem in snperh 
setting 

Direction — We are facing somewhat south of west. 
The Folgefond is towering into the sky away up be- 
yond that hilltop, but, of course, we are too far down 
under the lee of the hill to see it. Surroundings — 
Behind us is another hill corresponding to the one 
we see. 

That is the highway by which we have come. The 
waiting horse is headed toward Odde. That loop of 



Position 37. Map 5 



102 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

road at the left has been constructed to allow car- 
riages to come up for the view and return without 
backing the horse. They take a good deal of trouble 
nowadays to help strangers see the beauties of the 
country, and an especially large number of tourists 
come to this point because the Hamburg-American 
and other popular excursion boats go to Odde, and 
this is only a comfortable ride — three hours or so — 
from the village. A little hotel has in fact been built 
up here on this side hill, and takes care of a good 
many transient guests during the season. A three- 
hour drive gives one a good appetite for bread and 
cheese, fish, fresh milk, smoking coffee, and sweet 
wild strawberries ! 

Those waters that seem in such haste have only a 
comparatively short journey now to reach the ocean — 
that is, a long fjord below here at the north. 

But before they have gone many rods they receive 
another contribution, a double contribution as it were, 
from the hills on this east side of the highway. (See 
38 on the map.) 



Position 38, Skarsfos and I/Otefos leaping over the 
rocks to the meeting-place of their waters 

Direction — We are facing east. Surrowtdings — ■ 
Other craggy hills are behind us and at our right. The 
little river is bending around to flow nearly north 
toward Odde at the head of the fjord. 

This is Norway all over ! Nothing could be more 
characteristic than the way those ledges push their 
bare elbows out through the thin, ragged earth — ''the 
bones of the earth" old Norse poets used to call them. 
Just such stone bridges span tumbling streams in 



Position 38. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 103 

hundreds of places up and down the land. Passen- 
gers crossing this particular bridge sometimes find 
the spray from the falls blowing across the road like 
a summer shower. 

That horse is headed as if his passengers were going 
up through the Seljestad gorge and over to Roldal — : 
the way by which we have just come. 

But we shall turn in the opposite direction and visit 
Odde, the famous haven of summer excursionists. Do 
not fail to find on the map the location of our next 
standpoint. The spot is marked with a red 39 at the 
southern end of a long, narrow inlet of the sea — 
the Sorfjord, an arm of Hardangerfjord. The water- 
way is so crooked and so far reaching* that the upper 
end of it might almost be taken for a lake. Observe, 
too, what the diverging red lines tell about the out- 
look we are going to have ; we shall see some distance 
down the fjord, but the view will be cut off by moun- 
tains. The left-hand line reaches as far as the Folge- 
fond, that same snowy table-land which we saw from 
farther back near Seljestad. 



Position 3g, Village roofs and sunny £elds of Odde- 
north down the narrow, monntain-walled Sor- 
fjord 

Direction — We are facing now toward several of 
the most beautiful of the western fjords. For more 
than two hundred miles straight ahead the coast line 
is so cut up by long, irregular inlets that it would 
measure probably three times the straight distance. 
Surroundings — Behind us the land rises to form the 
long, sloping, crooked valley through which we have 
come from Seljestad. 



Position 39. Map 5 



104 ISrORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

This is a good-sized village for Norway. The 
fertile land here at the end of the valley is sufficient 
for several excellent farms. That white church calls 
together the country people from long distances, both 
up in the valley through which we have come and 
from various spots along the fjord, so the village is 
naturally regarded as an important center. There are 
shops here supplying people with the few things they 
have to buy — coffee and sugar, pretty kerchiefs, 
leather shoes, clocks, etc. — such prticles as they can- 
not produce by home industry. The largest buildings 
down there near the edge of the fjord are summer 
hotels, all doing a thriving business for two or three 
months each year when swarms of tourists land here 
from excursion steamers, like that big French vessel 
which now lies off-shore. The tourist season is short, 
but busy. 

Almost every book of Norwegian travel tells about 
coming here.''' The open ocean is, of course, off at 
our left, but, in order for that steamer to reach it on 
her return voyage, she will have to steam ahead, 
northward, twenty-five miles before the mountains 
part; then she will turn southwestward and have a 
further voyage of nearly fifty miles among pic- 
turesque headlands and islands before fairly reaching 
the open Atlantic. 

The lad in the cloth cap is a post-boy in charge of 
a horse which waits not far away. Down beyond his 
right shoulder, behind that sod-roofed cottage, we can 
see one of the tall hay-racks ready for its load: simi- 
lar racks, stuffed full of drying grass are dotted all 
over the valley fields. Fine, fertile land like this may 



♦See, foi- instance, Putnam's A Norwegian Ramble, Wood's Norwegian By 
ways, Goodman's Best Tour tit Norway, etc., etc. 



Position 39. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 105 

easily be worth as much as three or four hundred dol- 
lars an acre, but, of course, it is almost never in the 
market — as a rule the title to such real estate is in- 
herited, though sometimes a gaardmand (land owner) 
may suffer reverses of fortune and a Jmsmand (tenant) 
succeed in accumulating money by dint of special 
thrift, good luck, or prudent marriage; then a good 
bit of land may change owners. Such farms are 
often rather heavily mortgaged, in order to settle 
estates where several children have inherited equal 
titles to the land. 

That little river which opens into the fjord down 
there at the right is practically the same stream which 
we saw racing along below the Espelandsfos (Posi- 
tion 37), though it has meanwhile poured into a 
pretty little lake an hour's walk up behind us, and then 
reappeared as the lake's outlet. The highway follows 
its course. 

At the left of the river's mouth, between there and 
the church, we can see the gleam of tombstones in 
the parish churchyard. The Norse people hold pretty 
closely to certain traditions in regard to funerals and 
burials; it would be thought a great misfortune not 
to have one's body laid away in consecrated ground. 
Readers who remember Professor Boyesen's Falcon- 
berg — a story of Norse emigrant Hfe out in Minne- 
sota, U. S. A., will recall the dramatic punishment 
meted out by an autocratic pastor to an offending 
parishioner, by the stern refusal to give a certain 
protege the prayers of the church and a bed in hal- 
lowed earth. That Minnesota settlement, by the way, 
was called "Hardanger" after this very district where 
we are now. Every person in the story may be sup- 
posed to have known by heart the popular verses of 
Wergeland praising this charming corner of old Nor- 



Position 39. Map 8 



106 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

way. Poets have eternal license to ignore small dis- 
cords and immortalize the harmonious. 

"If there be a place so blest, 

Where from lonely, flower-clad valley, 
Mountains rear their silvery crest 

Toward high heaven majestically. 
And where from behind the screen 

Of a birch wood may be seen 
Peeping out a cottage lowly, 
O, where find you so much grace. 

Such repose from noisy clangour, 
Such retreats, such peaceful ways — 
Say, where is there such a place 

But in beautiful Hardanger?" 

But now let us go down into the village itself. 
Our next position will be at a window in the Hardan- 
ger Hotel at the left of the church. 

Position 40. Families and neighbors on a summer 
Sunday morning before the village church at 
Odde 

Direction — We are facing now about northeast. 
The fjord is just too far to the left for us to see at 
this moment. Surroundings — Right around us are 
the village houses and gardens. We saw from our 
previous position up on the hill that the village build- 
ings are grouped quite close together. 

They do not have service every Sunday through 
the year, or, as they themselves might put it, not 
every Sunday is a '* Sermon Sunday." The pastor 
conducts public worship also in one or two other 
churches, some distance away, and dates must alternate 
at certain intervals. Only by some such plan can the 
people in places smaller than Odde manage to pay a 
pastor. The "circuit" plan is practically similar to 



Position 40. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 107 

that followed in some sparsely settled districts in 
America. 

Morning service is just over now. The men and 
boys are coming out from their seats in the right 
side of the bare wooden sanctuary ; the women and 
girls had been sitting decorously at the other side. 
Nearly everybody has a hymn book. Now, as they 
stand or stroll along in the summer sunshine, there 
is a chance to greet relatives and friends. "Thanks 
for the last meeting" is a favorite salutation which 
children are taught to offer. "Thanks to yourself" 
is the conventional reply. The talk is just such as 
one hears at any gathering of country folk — inquiries 
for the health ; comments on the weather ; comparison 
of experiences or judgments on the crops. Norwegian 
people are taciturn oftener than talkative, and a few 
well-worn phrases do duty for the expression of a 
great amount of neighborly interest and cordial good 
feeling. 

Confirmation is a great occasion celebrated once 
a year, when boys and girls of fourteen or fifteen 
years, after a series of special lessons with the pas- 
tor, stand in line in the aisles, the boys on one side 
of the house and the girls on the other side, to pass 
a public examination in the Church catechism. To be 
appointed by the pastor to stand at the altar end of 
one's line, in the sight of the whole congregation, is 
an honor comparable to that of being chosen valedic- 
torian at an American grammar school "commence- 
ment.'' The benediction given to the young people is 
practically the same one that is familiar to members 
of other Protestant churches: — "The Lord bless thee 
and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine 
upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift 
up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace." 

Positioir~4a! Map 5 



108 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

It is the ceremony which ends childhood and admits 
boys and girls to the rank of young men and women. 
A good many romances begin at a place and time like 
this, when a youth's eyes rest on some demure damsel 
in new Sunday clothes and he suddenly begins to 
realize how grown-up she looks, and how pretty, and 
he feels grown-up, himself. 

Weddings are solemnized here, the invited guests 
coming from far and near, on foot, in farm wagons, 
and in row-boats over the fjord. The guests go back 
to the house with the wedded pair and spend at least 
the day and evening in gay festivities. 

Many Norwegian authors have portrayed interest- 
ing types of country clergymen. Brand in Ibsen's 
famous dramatic poem, known to English and Ameri- 
can readers through Herford's excellent translation, is 
a clergyman, but in no sense a typical one. Nor is 
Bjornson's Pastor Sang in Over Evne, who lives in 
a realm of spiritual exaltation so far above the level 
of everyday experience that he is represented as cur- 
ing a bedridden invalid by the compelling power of 
prayer. 

Even in a country church like this the pastor is a 
man with a university education, and tradition makes 
him a greatly respected figure in the community, the 
respect sometimes implying a certain degree of social 
isolation. 

The smart little shop at this side of the church, 
with the flag-pole over the door, is devoted mainly to 
the sale of photographs, embroideries, silver trinkets, 
knicknacks carved out of wood, and other souvenirs 
for summer tourists. Shops are closed on Sunday, 
though custom encourages picnics, athletic sports and 
dancing on Sunday afternoons after church is over 
for the day. 

Position 40. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 109 

Had you noticed that electric lights are established 
here? Nothing could be easier than to install electric 
lights in a land like Norway, where water-power is 
going to waste on every hand. Progressive inn- 
keepers are finding it wise to introduce more and more 
such modern improvements. 

There are several interesting excursions from Odde. 
Some of them involve journeying in a little fjord 
steamer which touches at various small piers like an 
accommodation train. If we look out from the second 
story of a building on the Odde wharf, a few rods be- 
yond the church, we can see passengers gathering for 
such a voyage. 

Position 41, I^eaving Odde for an excursion down 
the pictnresque, mountain-walled Sorfjord 

Direction — We are facing almost due north. Sur- 
roundings — The village is directly behind us. 

Norwegian poets have always shown a special af- 
fection for this part of Hardanger. Henrik Werge- 
land's great poem The English Pilot, contains a 
particularly vivid description of this charming region. 
Here is a fragment of it in English: — * 

"Where in pale blue ranks arise 

Alps that rim the mountain valley; 
Where above the crystal spring 

Blooms the snow-white apple-tree, 

And in tracks of snow you see 
Wild white roses blossoming; 
Where a stream begins its song 

Like a wind-harp low and muffled. 
Murmuring through the moss and stones: 
Then among the alders moans. 



Ic^mnud Gohse: Xorthern Studies. Positioo41. Map 5 



110 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Rushes out, involved and ruffled, 
By a youthful impulse driven, 

Foaming, till it reach the vale. 
And, like David with his harp, 

From a shepherd made a king 

By the songs that it can sing, 
Triumphs through the listening dale." 

And Andreas Munch has written a beautiful poem 
on this region. It has a magnificent melody and is 
popular in all of the Scandinavian countries. Here is 
the first stanza of it: — 

"There quivers a glittering summer air 

Warm over Hardanger fjord's fountains, 
Where high 'gainst the heavens, so blue and so 
bare, 
Are towering the mighty mountains. 

The glacier shines bright, 

The hillside is green. 

The people are clad 

In their Sunday clothes clean," . . . 

It is for all the world as if he had written it about 
this very day and these very people ! 

That larger vessel off shore is the same French 
excursion steamer which we saw when we were up 
on the hill behind the village. Some of these people 
on the wharf are foreign tourists, some are country 
people. A great many middle-aged and elderly men 
shave the upper lip, but wear a full, bushy beard under 
and around the chin. The favorite hand-baggage of 
the women ought to be in evidence, but someway 
nobody seems to have her tine in sight at just this 
moment. A tine corresponds to a lunch-basket, a 
shopping or traveling bag, a market-basket, a "suit- 
case" or valise, in short, to almost every sort of re- 



PosHioo 41. Map 5 



NORWAY TTIROUOir Till-: STKRKOSCOl'E 111 

cep table for hand-baggage. It may be of any size 
from a mere toy a few inches long to one or two feet. 
It is an elliptical wooden box with a flat cover; the 
cover has a deep notch at each end and is sprung 
into place by fitting each notch around a sort of stave 
which projects above the end of the box. The nicest 
tines are painted in gay colors or finished with a 
burning iron, and decorated with conventional flowers 
and leaves. Sometimes a tine has a wooden partition 
inside, dividing the space so that clothing and luncheon 
may be neatly packed under the one cover. There is 
a handle in the cover by which to carry it. 

Nearly all the supplies used at Odde and the 
scattered farms in this vicinity are brought on 
steamers of this sort from the coast towns. It is a 
twelve-hour voyage from Bergen, off ahead of us at 
the left, or a twenty-four-hour voyage from Stavanger, 
behind us at the left. Local fares on a steamer like 
this are trifling in amount, and people patronize the 
boat quite freely. Money is, of course, comparatively 
scanty, even where people live very comfortably in- 
deed. Many a prosperous farmer hereabout handles 
in the course of a year less actual cash than a single 
month's wages of an American factory operative, for 
almost every commonplace daily need is supplied from 
his own few acres of field, pasture and woodland or 
from the water of the fjord. 

We can guess for ourselves somewhere near the 
time of day by noticing those shadows on the wharf 
and remembering that we are now facing almost due 
north. The western sunshine tells its own story. If 
we were to ask one of these people the exact hour, 
the answer might mislead us, even if we understood 
Norwegian, for they have a diflFerent way of describ- 
ing certain intervals. Hah fern ("half five") means 

Position 41. Map 5 



112 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

not 5:30, but 4:30; it signities literally "half-way to- 
ward five." Tre Kvarter til et ("three-quarters to 
one") means what Americans call "a quarter to one," 
i. e., 12:45; but the Norwegian expression is really 
more exact, for the hands of the clock do stand three- 
quarters of the way toward one! 

Far ahead on the east side of the fjord we can see 
farm-buildings occupying little hollows in the moun- 
tain-side — such homes will be seen many times as 
we continue our way through the country. The snow- 
field, of which we see one corner drooping over the 
high cliffs beyond that mast, is part of the same one 
which we saw in the distance when we were up in 
the mountains near Seljestad. In several places along 
the side of that big, high tableland, masses of snow, 
compacted by their own weight into the form of 
glacial ice, slide downward, filling the steep valleys 
which form their channels. One such glacier (the 
Buar) is farther southwest, off behind us and out of 
range. There is a tradition that its enormous weight 
of ice, perpetually wasting and perpetually renewed, 
covers the place where once upon a time used to be a 
little hamlet. They say the people there had committed 
some awful sin and as a punishment the Lord sent a 
terrible snowstorm which lasted seventy days, bury- 
ing the entire settlement as a solemn warning to un- 
godly communities. If you doubt, they tell you how 
years and years ago remnants of old dairy furniture, 
milk buckets or bowls or something of that sort, were 
found under the glacier, freed by the midsummer melt- 
ing of its lower edge. Perhaps that proves the story. 
Again, perhaps the fragments may have come from 
some long-abandoned saeter. Perhaps they had never 
been milk buckets at all. In any case the story is 
impressive. 

PMttion 41. Map 5 



NOinVAV TTI ROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 113 

One of the most interesting local excursions made 
from Odde is to a certain valley high up on the moun- 
tains at the east (right) of the fjord. It takes a whole 
day to go up there and return. The custom is to go 
in a row-boat or a little launch from here to a point 
about four miles down the fjord, then land on the 
east bank and climb up through woods and steep, 
rocky pastures to a point 1850 feet higher than the 
fjord. Beyond that height is a hollow with two lakes, 
one of them about four miles long. One rows the 
length of that lake; then another half hour's climb 
takes the tourist to the spot which our map marks 42. 
It is worth while to identify the spot (on Map 5) ; 
the knowledge that it takes six hours to get there 
from Odde will make the spaces on paper mean more ! 



Position 42, A humble moantsiin borne at tbe foot 
of tbe cliffs where tbe imposing Skjseggedalsfos 
leaps 525 feet 

Direction — We are looking southwest, i. e., almost 
in the direction of Odde. Surroundings — Rocky 
heights, mostly barren like those seen ahead. 

The famous American traveler, Paul Du Chaillu, 
saw this same sight years ago and recorded in his 
widely-read book (The Land of the Midnight Sun) : 



"I had seen hundreds of large and thousands of 
small falls in Norway ; many were much higher, 
but none had ever impressed me with their 
beauty like the Ringedal.'^^ I gazed at it for hours, 
and new combinations and wonderful forms con- 
tinually presented themselves." 



♦Another name for the Skjaeggedalsfos, and also the name of the valley in 
which we stand. 

Position 42. Map 5 



114 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Even while we gaze at the falls, ourselves, it almost 
seems as if those drifting clouds of spray were chang- 
ing shape — shifting from one elusive form to another. 
Skjseggedalsfos is probably the grandest cataract in 
Europe. The approach to the falls on the gloomy 
Lake Ringedal is most impressive, and the first sight 
of them, in their rugged environment, as they suddenly 
burst upon the view, is awe-inspiring. 

If it were not for the tourists who come up here in 
little parties every few days for a short season in 
midsummer, this farmer's family would lead a life 
as isolated as one would care to imagine, yet this 
honde (peasant) is apparently contented with his lot. 
The wife and daughter make no profession of en- 
tertaining travelers, for meals are served at a larger 
farm farther down on our route, but they can furnish 
Hadhrod and goats' milk, if you wish. Meat is rarely 
seen at a little farmhouse like this; the main depend- 
ence all the year round is on barley or oatmeal por- 
ridge, bread and cheese and potatoes. Notice that the 
top of a low stone chimney shows above that sod- 
roof. It collects and carries off the smoke from a 
wood fire on an open stone hearth in the living-room. 
Most of the plates, bowls and spoons they use are 
Avooden and home-made ; the few pieces of iron, steel 
and earthen ware that they own were probably 
brought up from Odde. It is surprising how few arti- 
cles people do actually need to buy when they know 
how to do things and make things with their 6'vn 
hands. 

We can see now quite plainly how the logs a. si 
dovetailed together at the corner of the house. Very 
likely that little four-paned window does not open 
at all. Norwegian people with their natural dread 
of winter's piercing cold, often overlook the desirabil- 

Position 42. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 115 

ity of fresh air, and shut themselves up in an at- 
mosphere SO vitiated that it induces consumption of 
the lungs — a sad sarcasm of fate in a country where 
the air is like a tonic wine, but conservatism in such 
matters yields slowly. 

Away back in the fourteenth century the black 
plague was somehow introduced into Norway and 
spread from one hamlet and farm to another, sweep- 
ing off thousands of people. On some of the isolated 
farms in this very province everybody died and only 
after the lapse of years were the desolate houses 
found uninhabited like forsaken birds' nests. 

We should have to return the way we came, for 
this farmhouse and waterfall lie on no road to any- 
where else. Most tourists go from here back to Odde 
and make a fresh start from there by one of the many 
fjord steamers. 

Take a moment now^ for the map, and observe how 
the Sorfjord, reaching north from Odde, opens into 
a crooked east-and- west- reaching fjord with many 
straggling arms and subdivided inlets. These and the 
Sorfjord ("south"-fjord) itself, and some others 
farther west nearer the open sea, together constitute 
\M4iat is known as Hardangerf jord. Almost every mile 
of the way in from open sea is walled in by lofty 
mountains. Our route now takes us north in a small 
steamer down the Sorfjord, then east through the 
Ei if jord to a point near its head. A mile or two 
southeast of the head of Eidfjord the map shows a 
' ike with a highway along its western bank. That 
highway leads to one of the famous sights of this 
region, which we shall presently see. First, however, 
we pause for a moment at the spot marked 43, on the 
road beside the lake. 



Positioo 43. Map 5 



116 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Poaition 43. Narrow rock-sbelf where the road to 
Voringfos creeps past I^ake Oifjord^s deep waters 

Direction — We are looking north, i. e., down the 
lake towiards its outlet into the fjord. Surroundings 
— For some distance behind us the lake lies just below 
the road, like this. 

Here again the cliff had to be blasted out to give 
room for a road, just as they managed over in the 
Bratlandsdal which we passed through some time ago 
(Position 35). Even now the road looks almost too 
narrow for teams to meet, but actually there would 
be room, for those small two- wheeled carts require 
very little space, as one learns by experiment. As for 
passing in the same direction, that is seldom done at 
all. It seems to be the etiquette of the road to allow 
a horse ahead of you to keep ahead, whatever his 
pace may be. 

When Bayard Taylor traveled through this part of 
the kingdom fifty years ago, there was no highway 
along here. An almost unbroken cliff rose from the 
waters on this side of the lake, and the few visitors 
who came exploring the region had to row up the lake 
to reach its farther end, off behind us.^'' 

This young woman in the picturesque Hardanger 
costume is a farmer's daughter, who thriftily adds to 
her modest savings by working at a summer hotel 
some distance down the road. Such a maid is re- 
spectfully addressed as Froken — equivalent to "Miss" 
or the French ''Mademoiselle." The fair-haired little 
girl is the inn-keeper's daughter, shyly observant of 
the strange dress, manners and customs of foreign 
travelers. No wonder our ways seem strange! It is 
indeed a strange world of hurry and noise from which 



*See Northern Travel. 



Positjoo 43. Map 5 



XORWAV THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 117 

we come, in comparison with a sunshiny crevice of 
the earth like this! Scarcely a sound is to be heard 
here save the musical splash and gurgle of running 
brooks on their way to break with widening ripples 
the lovely reflections in that deep lake. 

The chief feeders of this lake are a couple of little 
rivers which come down from mountain heights 
farther inland, at the east. One of these streams may 
be followed up to a point two hours' climb beyond 
the head of the lake. There is a good path, kept in 
repair by a Norwegian Tourist Club. Long before 
one sees anything especially remarkable, the roar of 
falling water begins to be heard. The roar grows 
louder and louder, and at last, when one reaches the 
place marked 44 on the map — behold! This is what 
he sees. 

Position 44 » The seething waters of the mighty 
Voringfos, one of the largest waterfalls in Norway 

Direction — We face southeast. It is afternoon 
light which shines down into the gorge from up be- 
hind us. Surroundings — All around us are tall cliffs, 
some bare, some mossy. It is just a deep cleft in the 
rocks into which the river hurls itself. 

In a place like this it is difficult to estimate the 
dimensions of things, because there is almost nothing 
by which to measure; however, the lady in the white 
blouse, standing on the rocks part way down the bank, 
gives us a suggestion of relative heights. As a mat- 
ter of fact the stream leaps 470 feet from the brink 
of the precipice to the bottom of the ravine. If we 
compare those figures with the altitude of some 
familiar church spire at home they will mean more. 
The spray which we now see blowing hither and 

Position 44. Map 5 



118 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

tliitlier in the counter-draughts caused by the fall it- 
self are afterward borne upward by an ascending air 
current, like a tremulous pillar of cloud. Indeed it 
was such a pillar of mist, seen from a lonely farm 
miles above here farther inland, which first led to the 
discovery of the falls themselves in the year 1821. 

If we did but know it, our own sight of the plung- 
ing waters is a remarkably fortunate one, for only 
during a short time in the afternoon does the sun get 
a chance to shine into the ravine in this way and light 
up the sparkling veils of white. All the rest of the 
day that part of the narrow gorge is in shadow. 

Excursions to the Voringfos and the Skjseggedals- 
fos (Position 42), are considered quite thorough ex- 
ploration of the remote splendors of this famous 
Hardanger country. The greater number of tourists 
through Norway do not venture so far from the main 
traveled ways of steamship route and dusty highway. 
But we are now going to see such a sight as never 
confronts the mere tourist, but only the trained moun- 
taineer or the specially enthusiastic and indefatigable 
sportsman. 

In order to understand exactly where we are to 
go, turn yet once more to the same map which we 
have been using (Map 5) and look over its extreme 
northeastern portion. South of the Voringfos and 
several miles southeast of Lake Oifjord, the map 
marks our forty-fifth standpoint. The distance on flat 
paper does not seem great, but so ragged and rough 
is the utterly trackless waste of heights, ravines and 
barren plateaux, that it takes a couple of days to 
reach the spot, tramping with a Norwegian guide, 
loaded with blankets and provisions. The thing we 
are to see is not stationary like a mountain landmark. 

Position 44. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 119 

but variable in location ; moreover, while the traveler 
is anxious to see he is equally anxious not to he seen, 
consequently one moves about cautiously, according 
to the guide's instructions, until, creeping along a 
ridge of bare rock at the edge of a big July snow-bank, 
one peers over the ridge. . . . 

Position 45. Herd of reindeer, hardy creatures of 
the northern wilds, and snowy heights of Har- 
danger glacier 

Direction — We are facing north. Surroundings — 
This is the northern slope of Mt. Berakup on which 
we stand. All around us are dreary, uninhabited 
wastes of moor. At our right the moor stretches off 
sixty or seventy miles toward the interior of Norway. 

These are wild reindeer that have never been milked 
or harnessed or otherwise reduced to domesticity, and 
are exceedingly shy.* The only human creature whom 
they would knowingly allow to approach them is a 
certain Lapp who spends his time wandering over this 
lonesome district. The herd is nominally owned by 
certain people, but they have no definite knowledge 
of the number of the animals any more than the owner 
of an estate in the Scottish highlands knows the num- 
ber of his nesting grouse. The creatures wander 
about as they please, summer and winter, always mov- 
ing against the wind. In summer the scanty grass 
and other herbage give them a good living. In win- 
ter, when snow lies deep over all the ground, and the 
thermometer goes down far below zero on these 
heights, three-quarters of a mile above sea-level, these 
hardy creatures still manage to subsist. The beautiful, 



*A moment after the exposure was made for this negative, the entire herd 
ran off pell-mell in a panic and were soon nearly out of sight. 



Position 45. Maps 



120 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

yellowish and reddish-brown skins are singularly im- 
pervious to the cold, and depth of snow merely gives 
them desirable exercise. With their hoofs and horns 
they dig away the snow from over banks of the so- 
called ''reindeer moss" and come out the following- 
spring in good condition.* 

The entire growth of antlers we see now has been 
made since those of last year were shed in the spring. 
While still short, soft and tender (**in the vel- 
vet," as sportsmen say), through the spring 
these animals are peaceable with each other. The 
lengthening and sharpening and hardening of those 
splendid, spreading branches takes place at a very 
rapid rate, and before winter they will be tough as 
flint, ready for duty as swords in some reindeer duel. 
At this present time of year — midsummer — the 
creatures roam long distances, so their Lapp friend 
reports, often feeding one day forty or fifty miles 
from where they were a day or two before. Their 
tolerance of the Lapp himself is partly owing to a 
curious sort of mutual understanding which seems to 
exist between them, and partly to the explicit fact that 
he carries salt with him — a dainty for which they share 
the traditional appetite of domesticated cattle. 

Later in our journey we shall see reindeer reduced 
to the state of servitude. 

Sportsmen occasionally come up where we are now 
with guides, tents and provisions, for the sake of a 
shot at such big game. Campbell's Wild Norway tells 
of stalking a huge buck whose horns measured 51 
inches long, with 29 inches beam. Major Ferryman's 



*Du Chaillu in The Land of the Midnight Sun tells about seeing reindeer 
dig such deep holes in the snow, in_ order to reach edible moss, they them- 
selves were almost entirely out of sight while actually feeding. 



Position 45. Map 5. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 121 

In the Norseman's Land has some exciting accounts 
of similar sport. 

In clear weather like this to-day there is something 
magnificent about the very bigness of the open spaces 
of earth and sky, and the magnificence is curiously 
characteristic of Norway. You notice the strangely 
monotonous level of that gigantic ice field straight 
ahead fifteen or eighteen miles away against the north- 
ern sky. Just such are most of the high contours to 
be seen from the "Hardanger Vidda/' as this huge 
open heath is called. 

Bayard Taylor, whose book on Northern Travel 
fifty years ago awoke America to a realization of how 
much there is to see in Norway, said : — 

'*Once upon the broad, level summit of a Nor- 
wegian fjeld, one would never guess what lovely 
valleys lie under those misty breaks which 
separate its immense lobes — what gashes of life 
and beauty penetrate its stony heart. There are, 
in fact, two Norways; one above, a series of de- 
tached, irregular masses, bleak, snowy, wind- 
swept and heather-grown, inhabited by herdsmen 
and hunters; one below — a ramification of nar- 
row veins of land and water, with fields and 
forests, highways and villages." 
When storms sweep over this bleak highland, even 
in midsummer, the desolation is something better to 
hear about than to experience. It sometimes rains or 
snows a week at a time, the wind sweeping across in 
great gusts, making it impossible to keep a tent in 
place except in some specially sheltered spot. It seems 
pretty evident that Nature never intended the region 
for human habitation. 

The great glacier which we have just seen at the 
north is perpetually losing parts of its thick ice- 

Position 45. Map 5. 



122 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

blanket; their own weight drags them over the sides 
of the plateau and makes them scrape slowly down 
the side slopes, as the midsummer sun melts their 
lower edges. 

Returning now down to the eastern end of the 
Eidfjord below Lake Oifjord (see the northeastern 
part of our map), our proposed route calls for an 
hour's row northeasterly to the head of a small inlet, 
and then involves a long hard tramp up through the 
valley known as the Simodal, towards a part of the 
great glacier. A professional guide accompanies 
travelers, for it is a rough, wild country, with hardly 
any signs of habitation — a bad place in which to lose 
one's way and be overtaken by an avalanche or a 
sudden storm. Part way up a ravine we pause at 
the point which the map marks 46 and look ahead. 

Position 46. Flood from a tnelting glacier , where 
Rembesdalsfos comes over a towering precipice 

Direction — We are facing north toward part of the 
great glacier which we saw in the distance when we 
were with the reindeer over on Hardanger Vidda. 
Surroundings — Around us on all sides are crags and 
ledges like what we see. 

We cannot possibly take in the awful grandeur of 
the falls until we have gazed at them again and again. 
If it were not for the presence of our guide* down 
there on the rocks some distance ahead, we might 
easily underestimate the heights and depths and cross 
distances, so difficult it is to believe the titanic scale 
on which this ravine is made. Those precipices at the 
right and left are as high as two lofty cathedrals piled 



*L8rs Legreid. He is one of the best guides in Norway, knowing every 
rod of the way, and speaking English. 



Position 46. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGTr THE STEREOSCOPE 123 

one on top of the other; no wonder that sturdy Lars 
Legreid looks like a doll in comparison with his sur- 
roundings ! 

The bare rocks of the gorge ahead offer such scanty 
footholds for would-be explorers that iron staples have 
been set at intervals, holding chains to which a climber 
may cling while he creeps or scrambles over the most 
dangerous places. Down here where we are now, shut 
in by high walls, the heat of the midsummer sun is 
almost stifling, especially to one wearied by the pre- 
vious rough climbing. Up ahead there, where the 
water comes down apparently out of the sky, the 
wind blows a chilly gale and the water is ice-cold. 
Everything here is on a gigantic scale, even the con- 
trasts of temperature! 

But where does the river really come from? 

Away up over that lofty rim of the precipice is a 
shelf or shoulder of the mountain, and on that shelf, 
at the foot of another irregular height, is the sky- 
reservoir from which this flood comes rushing. Our 
next position (47) will be on the margin of that 
reservoir. 



Position 4 7 . Stream of solid ice (Hardanger glacier) 
and lake (Rembesdalsvand) formed where it 
melts 

Direction — We are facing northeast. Surroundings 
— Ledges of rock with occasional patches of moss, and 
off at our left a scanty growth of grass around a 
deserted saeter. 

That is Lars again. The boat used to belong to 
the saeter before it was abandoned, and he has bailed 
it out to serve for a row across to the glacier. The 



Position 47. Map 5 



124 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

greenish water is full of fine, powdery waste from 
the rocks over which the heavy ice-mass has been 
scraping and grinding, as it slowly settles toward 
this melting-point. 

It looks like a frozen river emptying into the lake, 
and indeed it amounts to that, only it was never a 
liquid river — it was solid ice before ever it began its 
downward movement. Its depth can only be esti- 
mated; it may vary anywhere from fifteen or twenty 
feet at the edges to one or two hundred feet in other 
places — evidently this part facing us partially fills a 
deep valley between the cliffs. Those wave-like cor- 
rugations on the surface are much larger than they 
look from here, in many cases probably thirty or 
forty feet high; some of those streaks of shadow 
mark deep, yawning cracks (crevasses), where the 
thick mass gave way under some extra pull or strain 
caused by unevenness in the bottom of the valley 
underneath. 

The falls which we saw from Position 46 are now 
a short distance away at our right, where this lake 
spills its outlet down over the edge of the mountain- 
shelf on which we now stand. The water then de- 
scends through the long, steep, rocky valley and joins 
the salt depths at the head of the fjord. 

Leaving now Map 5 to which we have been so often 
referring, let us go back for a moment to Map 2, which 
shows the whole of southern Norway. The red oblong 
between 60° and 61° latitude shows the region around 
the Sorfjord which we have lately been exploring. 
Now we shall go to Bergen, the chief town of western 
Norway, on the seacoast in latitude between 60° and 
61°. Be sure to find it on this map, for our outlook 
over the town will be much more significant if we 

Position 47. Map 5 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 125 

understand how the harbor Hes with relation to the 
open ocean. 

Now turn to Map 6, which shows Bergen by itself. 
Our forty-eighth standpoint is marked on a hill at 
the east of the town, and the branching red Hues indi- 
cate a far outlook across a portion of the town itself, 
across the harbor and an outer bay, and farther still, be- 
yond the limits of this special map. Notice that a zigzag 
road leads out of the town proper and goes some dis- 
tance up the hill at the east — the Floifjeld. Zigzags 
like those on any Norwegian map are sure to imply a 
very steep grade. 



Position 48. Bergen, west from the Floifjeld, over 
the harbor and Paddefjord 

Direction — We are facing west, so the open ocean 
must lie beyond those islands which wall-in the hori- 
zon. Surroundings — We are only part way up the 
Floifjeld; it rises steep and rugged behind us. 

It is the oldest and most picturesque part of the 
town that we see now. Bergen has grown so much 
during the last thirty or forty years that streets have 
spread and been well built up over an area as large 
as this, farther south (left) beyond our present range 
of vision. The railway station is down in that part 
of the town — the terminal of a seventy-mile line over 
to Vossevangen at the east. Before long a railway 
will be completed from here to Christiania. A num- 
ber of the oldest streets are crowded close under this 
hill, too far to the right for us to see from here. 

This is the favorite outlook over the town — tourists 
come up here, usually in carriages like the one which 

P08itioo48. Map 6 



126 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Stands waiting ;* some come up on foot, making short 
cuts by means of stairs built over the hillside, and are 
glad of the chance to rest on that bench. Such benches 
are set along the road at spots where the view is con- 
sidered particularly good. We ourselves are 
peculiarly fortunate in finding clear air — actually 
bright sunshine ! Rainy days are so many here in 
the course of the year that numberless jokes are made 
about the climate ; the annual rainfall actually does 
amount to seventy-two inches, so the jokes have a 
good basis of fact. They say, for instance, that the 
first gift Bergen etiquette prescribes for a new-born 
baby is a waterproof cloak. According to local tradi- 
tion this horse should shy at the sight of a man with- 
out an umbrella. Legend says that a Bergen ship- 
master was once coming home after a long voyage, 
and, seeing bright sunshine on the red-tiled roofs of 
these Bergen houses below us, he thought he had mis- 
taken his port and put out again to sea ! 

That large steamer down in the harbor is an ocean- 
liner; the smaller vessels are chiefly fishing boats. 
Those warships anchored over in the Puddefjord be- 
yond the town are German vessels escorting H. M. 
Emperor Wilhelm II on the occasion of a visit here 
(1905). Bergen has now no military defences worth 
mentioning, though an old fort still standing down 
by the mouth of the harbor (we do not see it from 
here) was considered powerful in the Middle Ages. 
Eight hundred years ago, and for several centuries 
after that, the kings of Norway held their court here — 
the old palace of King Olaf Kyrre stood close by the 
foot of this hill, near that cathedral with the square 



♦Travelers who are familiar with the sculptui-e of Attic Greece are often 
struck by the resemblance of these stocky, thick-necked ponies to the 
famous marble steeds on the Parthenon frieze. 



Pos?tlott 48. Map 6 



XORWAV THROUGH THE STERKOSCOPE 127 

tower. Some of the sixty vessels with which Sigurd 
the '7Gi"usalem-farer" sailed to the Holy Land in 1107 
started from this very harbor on their long voyage 
away around Europe and through the Mediterranean 
Sea, bearing sturdy Norsemen to fight around the 
walls of old Jerusalem.* In the twelfth century, when 
the home kingdom was itself in a turmoil of civil 
wars, the most important battles were fought in this 
harbor or right off-shore. 

It was probabl}^ out from this harbor that a Scottish 
ship sailed in 1290 or thereabouts, carrying "the king's 
daughter o' Norroway" to mount the throne of her 
Scottish grandfather; (Eric Magnusson had married 
Margaret of Scotland). Histories say little about it, 
but the famous old Scotch ballad. Sir Patrick S pence, 
preserves the legend. Scotland is only forty-eight 
hours' away by steamer, over beyond those islands 
straight ahead, but the North Sea is treacherous, and 
the second-sight of Sir Patrick's reluctant seamen 
boded true. The Norroway princess never reached 
shore. 

"Half o'er, half o'er to Aberdour 
'Tis fifty fathoms deep. 
And there lies good Sir Patrick Spence 
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet." 

. For the last four hundred years, commercial inter- 
ests have predominated here in Bergen — this is one 
of Europe's greatest centers for the fish trade, and 
here, too, arrive a large proportion (about $9,000,000 
worth) of the country's imports from other countries. 
Forty-five per cent, of the national revenue is de- 
rived from duties on coffee, tea and sugar. 



♦See Map i to recall the peculiarly roundabout route they had to take. 



POisition 48. Map 6 



128 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Old Sagas record Norway's early recognition of 
the importance of foreign trade. Like all other peo- 
ple of spirit, in old times, the Norsemen accounted it 
perfectly fair to seize English, Irish and French valua- 
bles as the prize of victorious warfare, but, after the 
fighting was over, they frankly took to barter as a 
means of securing further supplies. Egil's Saga tells 
how : — 

"Thorolf had a large seagoing ship; in every 
way it was most carefully built, and painted nearly 
all over above the water-line. It had a sail with 
blue and red stripes, and all the rigging was very 
elaborate. This he made ready, and ordered his 
men-sCrvants to go with it; he had put on board 
dried fish, skins, tallow, gray fur and other furs, 
which he had from the mountains. All this was 
of much value. He sent it westward to England 
to buy cloth and other goods that he needed. They 
went southward along the coast and then out to 
sea. When they arrived in England they found 
a good market, loaded the ship with wheat and 
honey, wine and cloth, and returned in the 
autumn with fair winds." 

A twelfth century historian records : — 

"Some time after, King Sverrir held a Thing 
(council) in Bjorgyn (Bergen) and spake: 'We 
thank all Englishmen who bring hither wheat and 
honey, flour or cloth, for coming. We thank also 
all men who bring hither linen, wax or kettles. 
We will also name those who have come from 
the Orkneys, Hjaltland, Faroes, Iceland, and all 
who bring into this country things useful for it.' "'•' 

At the present time Bergen capital alone supports a 
mercantile fleet comprising over one hundred steamers 
and nearly three times as many sailing vessels, large 



♦Sverrir's (Sverre's) Saga. 
Position 48. Map 6 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 129 

or small. Several great ship-building establishments 
conduct a prosperous business over beside the Pudde- 
fjord, west of the town. 

There are more than a hundred factories, large and 
small, within the municipal limits, and five thousand 
employes earn their bread making leather, wood 
pulp, woolen cloth, matches, etc., etc. The increase 
of such manufacturing industries accounts for the 
recent growth of the town as a w^hole. 

That large open space down in the nearer part of 
the town, at the left, is the principal public square ; 
those modern buildings close by are the exchange, 
banks, insurance offices and the like. That square is 
practically part of a still larger open space, for it ad- 
joins the principal market-place at the head of the 
harbor. We cannot see down into the market-place 
at this moment, because buildings at its southeast side 
cut oft" our view, but we shall presently go down 
there (Positions 49 and 50) to see what is going on. 
A Httle farther to the right, close by the harbor, a 
few minutes' walk northwest from the cathedral with 
the square tower, stand some famous old warehouses 
which we shall also take pains to see when we go 
down into the town (Position 51). Now look directly 
over the head of the waiting coachman and find, at 
the farther side of the harbor, a large building with 
an arcaded lower story and three upper stories gener- 
ously provided with windows. We shall, by and by 
(Position 52), stand in a square beside that building 
and look across the harbor to some interesting his- 
toric landmarks which stand now too far to our right 
to be visible. 

The conspicuous white buildings away out near 
the northwest end of the town peninsula include a fine 
new city hospital. 

Position 48. Map 6 



130 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Now to go down into the town. Look on the city 
map (Map 6) and find our forty-ninth position, where 
it is set down in the square at the head of the harbor. 
As the red lines end on the side of the Floifjeld, this 
height must evidently form the background of our 
view. 



Position 4g. In the great market-place of busy 
Bergen; from the ftower market to the £sh market 

Direction — We are facing north towards the steep 
wall of the Floifjeld, from which we had just been 
looking off. Surroundings — The harbor is just at our 
left. The peninsula district of the town, over which 
we have been looking, lies off over our left shoulder — 
i. e., partially behind us. Directly behind us and at 
the right are the newer sections of the town. 

There are nearly seventy thousand people in Bergen ; 
it is next to Christiania in point of population, so we 
need not be surprised to find a large throng attending 
the semi-weekly market. 

A pretty sight, isn't it, with this gay display of 
flowers ? Bergen people love them and have money to 
buy them; the mild climate and the frequent rains 
are good for the gardens, and dozens of industrious 
gardeners get both pleasure and profit out of flower- 
raising. The glazed cases are like those we saw at 
Christiania for cut flowers. 

A few rods ahead at the edge of the harbor, other 
vendors are disposing of fish of all sorts. Vegetables, 
small fruits and the usual miscellaneous stock of a 
large country market can also be found here, but fish 
and flowers seem to be the most conspicuously in de- 
mand here in Bergen. A good many people here have 
comfortable fortunes ; mill-owners, ship-owners, ship- 



Position 49. Map 6 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 131 

builders, importers and commission merchants make 
up a prosperous moneyed class, and similar prosperity 
has existed for several generations, so that there are 
people here who were born to comfortable living and 
who have always had opportunities for culture. The 
result is that Bergen has an unusually large number 
of highly educated people. The public schools are 
admirable. Boys and girls attend school without any 
fees until they are fourteen — the payment of a modest 
fee in the public high school gives them about the 
same training that they would receive in an American 
high school and prepares them, if desired, for either 
the university or one of the large technical schools. 
There is a fine public library here ; a good art museum, 
a museum of natural history with summer classes for 
school teachers ; a museum of archaeology, and another 
devoted especially to fisheries ; there are industrial and 
trade schools for both boys and girls ; a theatre where 
good plays and concerts are given — altogether Bergen 
is distinctly "up-to-date," as the American phrase puts 
it. Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was a Bergen 
boy. Grieg, the famous musical composer, was born 
in Bergen and still lives here; Ibsen and Bjornson, 
the celebrated litterateurs, have both lived here. Nan- 
sen, the Arctic explorer, was for a time curator of 
the Bergen Museum. It is a fine old town, and its 
.children, native and adopted, do it credit! 

Most of the older buildings here in Bergen are of 
wood, but the tendency now (distinctly shaped by 
new ordinances) is to build in less inflammable 
masonry. Fire has always been a fearful scourge in 
this land of wooden building construction. 

Those electric lights are an incalculable advantage 
in a place like this, counterbalancing the depressing 
effect of the long winter evenings. When, even in 

Positions 49. map 6 



132 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

clear weather, the sun stays below the horizon eighteen 
hours at a stretch — and it does that here in De- 
cember — the enlivening effect of such lights is some- 
thing to be thankful for. Of course, the town streets 
had for years been lighted after a fashion, but the 
new method has special effectiveness and charm. 

A few foreign tourists are mingling to-day with 
the crowd of townsfolk and country people before us, 
but most of the faces we see are thoroughly Nor- 
wegian. Many of the people speak one or two foreign 
languages at least well enough to serve ordinary prac- 
tical purposes; English, French and German are 
taught in the schools here and by private tutors. Very 
little peasant picturesqueness is to be seen nowadays 
in the way of costume. The Bergen folks themselves 
dress just as they might in Copenhagen or Berlin or 
Chicago, and many of the farmers' wives and 
daughters follow their lead as far as scantier purses 
will permit. 

Let us move a few rods forward, from where we 
stand now, then, stationing ourselves at the second- 
story window of a building alongside the market, look 
across towards what has been at our left. The new 
position is marked 50 on the city map. Observe that 
the red lines extending from it reach away off down 
the harbor. 



Position 50. The harbor, northwest from the market- 
place in Bergen, the greatest £sb market of Nor- 
way 

Direction — Towards open ocean, though large 
islands cut off the view in the distance. Surroundings 
— The flower-sellers are now at our left. The tower- 



Posttlov 50. Map 6 



NORWAY THROUGH T\U] STKREOSCOPE 183 

ing bulk of the Floifjeld is now beyond a few crowded 
streets at our right. 

This pier, shaped hke a bhmt arrow-head, is a 
famous okl center for retail sales of fish. Almost 
every tourist who ever visited Norway has been here. 
The people leaning over the rail at this side of the 
triangle are looking down into the boat of a fisher- 
man and listening while somebody tries to make a 
shrewd bargain. The rule is never to give what the 
fisherman first asks, but to beat down his price. This 
is partly because the average housewife really has a 
very small income, a good mechanic earning perhaps 
not more than $3 weekly, and partly because that is 
the way to play the game, chaffering, holding back, 
refusing and relenting by turns. Many of the fish 
are alive, swimming in water in the bottom of the 
boat or in tanks of water along the edge of the pier. 
Every sort of fish can be had here, from salmon of 
the most expensive quality down to the cheapest kinds 
of fish costing a cent or less. Dried, salted and smoked 
fish are also for sale. 

These city people are too sophisticated to carry 
wooden tinci' for their purchases. Baskets are more in 
favor. 

Now that we are so near the water we can see quite 
plainly the style of boat used by the fishermen, almost 
.without exception high and pointed at both ends, like 
the old Viking ship that we saw at Christiania (Posi- 
tion 7). By the way, the Norwegian name for one 
of those sail boats — jcBgte, is the same word as the 
EngHsh word ''yacht." Those staunch little craft 
can stand an almost incredible amount of knocking 
about in rough weather — the Norsemen have been 
boatbuilders from time immemorial. They know their 
business. Immense quantities of cod and herring are 

Position 50. Map 6 



134 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

brought in here every season direct from the fishing 
banks among islands farther north. Valuable cargoes 
of cured fish, cod liver oil and whale oil are 
brought in here from Aalesund, Svolvaer, Hammer- 
fest and other fishing stations at the north, and re- 
shipped to European buyers. Six million dollars worth 
or thereabouts leave this harbor every year for foreign 
ports. 

That tall stone building in the distance, at the north 
side of the harbor, known as Valkendorf's Tower, has 
stood there almost seven hundred years. King Haakon 
Haakonson built it after the civil wars were ended 
in the thirteenth century, and a national convention 
held here in Bergen had confirmed his right to the 
throne of Norway. Of course, it is not just as it was 
in Haakon's time; it was enlarged in the sixteenth 
century and repaired sixty years ago. It is now used 
as an arsenal and military museum. 

Consult the city map and we find it shows a long 
quay, bordering the north side of the harbor, around 
a turn of the shore from the market-place. On the 
land side there are evidently buildings of some sort 
facing the quay. It is the old Tyskebrygge (German 
Quay) — a place widely celebrated and one which 
every tourist takes pains to see, because of its curious 
history. We shall stand where the number 51 is 
printed, and look off alongside the harbor as the red 
lines indicate. 



Position 5x. Warehouses along the quay in the old 
town of Bergen 

Direction — Northwest. Surroundings — The market- 
place is now off over our left shoulder. The harbor 



Position 50. Map 6 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 135 

waters are just out of range at our left. The steep 
side of the Floifjeld rises only a few minutes' walk 
from here, at our right. 

Those masts at the left show how near are the 
harbor waters. The tall roof at the right of the masts 
is that af the same thirteenth century stone building, 
which we saw from the market-place. They call it 
the Valkendorf Tower — sometimes the Rosenkrantz 
Tower. The high gable cut in steps, which shows 
above the end of the street, is another of Bergen's 
historic places, the King's Hall ; we shall see that bet- 
ter by and by when we go over to the south side of the 
harbor (Position 52). Both buildings date back to 
the thirteenth century, but have been carefully re- 
stored. 

Those flags, blowing in the wind that sweeps up 
from the harbor, emphasize proudly the fact the 
Norsemen themselves are masters here. It was not 
always so. These old wooden warehouses were once 
the local habitation of one of the most curious and 
powerful of all the great ''Trusts" of the Middle 
Ages. The famous Hanseatic League of Continental 
trading towns began about 1241, simply as an asso- 
ciation for protection against highwaymen and pirates, 
and developed gradually into what would now be de- 
scribed as a gigantic "syndicate" of rich municipalities 
engaged in trade. About the middle of the fifteenth 
century certain German members of the Hanseatic 
League were allowed to establish offices here and 
carry on an export trade in fish : that was during the 
period when Norway was ruled by a non-resident 
Danish king, and the Norwegians themselves were 
given little consideration if their claims had to be 
balanced against those of powerful foreigners. By 
one means and another the Germans managed to get 

Position 51. Map ^ 



136 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

greater and greater privileges from the Danish gov- 
ernment, until after a while they were actually per- 
mitted to monopolize the foreign fish trade of north- 
ern and western Norway, driving out of business not 
only their English, Scottish and Dutch competitors, 
but even the Norwegians themselves ! The vast capi- 
tal and enormous political power of the League stood 
behind them, and shrewd Germans made the most of 
their unjust opportunity, amassing princely fortunes 
for certain natives of Bremen, Lubeck and other 
"Hansa" towns over on the Continent. 

These wooden buildings were all occupied two hun- 
dred years ago by agents and clerks of merchants in 
the great League. They stand on the site of similar 
buildings occupied in the same way since the middle of 
the fifteenth century, but destroyed by accidental fires. 
On the ground floor of each building were great 
store-rooms, where cured fish accumulated, awaiting 
shipment. On the next floor the manager or superin- 
tendent had his oflice, counting-room and private 
apartments ; on the upper floors lived the bookkeepers 
and correspondence-clerks, common laborers and ser- 
vants. The employes were obliged to live on the 
premises, and were at all times under their managers* 
authority; a dull time they must have had in most 
cases. Not a man was allowed to find a wife or sweet- 
heart among the Bergen girls, for fear his interest 
would become divided and the German capitalists 
make less money. Serious courtship and light-minded 
flirtation were alike forbidden; the semi-monastic dis- 
cipline of these establishments would not permit any 
woman to enter the men's apartments, even as a 
servant, and the beds had to be made up by reaching 
in clumsily from an outside room through a small 
window in the partition wall beside each bunk! 

Position 51. Map 6 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 137 

According to old accounts, the German clerks must 
have been a very uncouth and boisterous lot, and the 
Bergen girls were probably quite as well off without 
them. They used to play all sorts of rough-and-tum- 
ble practical jokes on each other, and they practised 
for years a hideously brutal system of hazing, ap- 
plicable to each new member of an office staff. Such 
doings are described in considerable detail in the 
chapter on Bergen in Zimmern's The Hansa Towns, 
a book well worth reading in connection with a visit 
here. 

Of course, there must have been some who took 
satisfaction in reading and study after the long hours 
of work; but the well-grounded dread of fire caused 
another rule strictly forbidding fires and lights in the 
main buildings. When a midwinter evening begins 
about 2 P. M. such a regulation is no small hardship ; 
however, the managers built small, separate structures 
in the garden space behind each house, where men 
could smoke, play cards, read and talk in comparative 
comfort. Those "common-rooms," as they were 
called, are now mostly destroyed by accident or the 
wear-and-tear of time. 

Christopher Valkendorf, whose name is borne by 
the old stone tower beyond, kept up a gallant struggle 
in Norway's behalf against the crushing burden of 
this German trade-monopoly, and through his efforts 
the situation became less intolerable in the latter part 
of the sixteenth century. It was not, however, until 
1764 that the very last of the old German offices here 
was sold out to a native of Norway. Now, of course, 
Norwegians are making fortunes for themselves, ship- 
ping fish to all quarters of Europe, especially keeping 
up a large and profitable trade with the Catholic coun- 
tries on the Mediterranean, where religious obliga- 
tions necessitate the wide use of fish for food. 

Position 51. Map 6 



138 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Bergen is one of the few places in Norway where 
there are enough resident CathoUcs to support a 
church ; the Catholic people here are mostly sailors and 
workmen with families. The Catholic church is in 
the new (southern) part of the town, away over be- 
hind us and off at the left. It is only sixty years since 
the Government allowed churches other than those of 
the State (Lutheran) faith to be built at all. Ever 
since the Reformation, Norway has been rigidly in- 
tolerant of other forms of religion, and even now any 
Dissenter (that means anybody who is not a Lutheran) 
suffers definite social and professional disabilities, 
being ineligible to government office, large or small. 

Take one more look at the city map and find our 
fifty-second standpoint in a sort of broad cross-avenue 
or oblong "square" in the peninsula district of the 
town about opposite the middle of the harbor. The 
various open spaces which seem disproportionately 
numerous, are left on purpose, as a safeguard against 
the spread of fires. Notice how the red lines reach 
across the harbor, including several buildings inside 
the line of some old fortification. 



Position 5^. Sternly picturesque old fortress (Ber- 
genbus), seen from a square in the modem town 
of Bergen 

Direction — We are looking north across to the hill 
known as Sverresborg, and the mountains behind it. 
Surroundings — The streets of the town surround us 
here, reaching off to the right and left and behind us. 
The market-place at the head of the harbor is some 
distance away at the right. 



Position 52. Mnp 6 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 139 

The Floifjeld, from whose steep side we got our 
first outlook over Bergen (Position 48), is off at our 
right, at the other side of the harbor. You remember 
that when we were up on the Floifjeld we looked 
down over this peninsula part of the town and noticed 
this very building with the arcaded lower story, the 
many-windowed upper stories and the gable in the 
roof. 

That tall, square building on the opposite side of 
the harbor, its peaked roof indistinct against the 
mountain background, is the same one which we saw 
from the fish market and from the quay beside the 
old German warehouses. At the left we see the quaint 
King's Hall, recently restored after years of neglect; 
for some time it had been used as a grain storehouse. 
Both buildings were originally included in the walls 
of Bergen's little citadel — Bergenhus ; the fort proper 
is a bit too far to the west (left) for us to see from 
here. Both the Tower and the Hall were built during 
the thirteenth century, after the time of the civil wars 
when Bergen saw the hottest fighting yet they have 
had some experience of warfare — there are to-day still 
sticking in the walls of the tower some cannon-balls 
fired in by British frigates outside the harbor in an 
effort to frighten the townspeople into giving up some 
Dutch vessels that had taken refuge here. But Nor- 
wegians are not easily frightened. 

The King's Hall looks from here somewhat like a 
church, but its purpose was social and ceremonial, not 
religious. There is a huge fireplace inside, and at 
one end a throne for the old monarch (Haakon 
Haakonson), who annexed Greenland and Iceland, 
including in his realm not only all Norway, but also 
the Orkney and Shetland Islands, the Faroes, the 

Position 52. Map 6 



140 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Hebrides and the Isle of Man. In that hall he used 
to give great banquets where ale was quaffed by 
brawny Norsemen with unlimited thirst. There, too, 
hard-fighting warriors sat around the fire, listening 
to the rhythmic chant of story-tellers recounting old 
tales of heroes, giants and gods. 

The hard-drinking practised in those old times has 
at this distance a certain picturesque aspect, but Nor- 
way has come to feel that it is out of place in this 
twentieth century. Two or three generations ago 
drunkenness was appallingly common — so common in 
fact, that it threatened to eat out the vigor of the 
people, reducing their physique and seriously retard- 
ing the prosperity of the kingdom. To-day the situa- 
tion is immensely improved. Partly through the stead- 
ily rising social standards of average people, and 
partly as the result of wise legislation pertaining to 
the liquor traffic, the evil is now abated to a great 
extent — indeed the present average consumption of 
alcohol in Norway is only about one-third as much as 
in Great Britain, one-fourth as much as in Germany, 
one-fifth as much as in Belgium and France. Here in 
Bergen, for instance, retail sales of intoxicating 
liquors can be made only in a certain limited number 
of shops licensed by popular vote. The persons mak- 
ing the sales are on fixed salaries, and so have no per- 
sonal interest in pushing sales beyond their normal 
volume. All books and accounts are audited by mu- 
nicipal and State examiners. The owners or stock- 
holders in the business can retain only 5 per cent, of 
the profits, the remaining profits being divided in cer- 
tain fixed proportions between the municipality of 
Bergen, the amt (county or province) and the 
State — such income being used for the maintenance 
of jails and hospitals and for public improvements of 

Position 52. Map 6 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 141 

general utility. For example, that fine road up the 
steep side of the Floifjeld (we had one brief glimpse 
of it when we were looking over the town from Posi- 
tion 48), was built in part, if not wholly, with funds 
derived from liquor sales down here in the town. 
Municipal ordinances forbid sales of intoxicants under 
any circumstances between 10 P. M. and 8 A. M. ; 
on Sundays and church holidays ; and after 1 P. M. 
on days preceding Sundays and holidays. 

On the other hand, increasing efforts are made to 
provide decent, wholesome recreation to take the place 
of hard drinking. Bergen supports an excellent pub- 
lic library ; the municipality appropriates a small sum 
every year toward the support of the theatre; band 
concerts are given in summer in a pretty public park; 
the school children are being led to take an intelligent 
interest in the museums of natural history and north- 
ern antiquities. Boating, skiing, skating, sledging, 
and all such out-of-door sports, are heartily en- 
couraged by prize competitions. Old Norway cer- 
tainly holds the key to her difficult social problem, and 
the solution is being steadily worked out. 

This open space where we are now is Holbergs 
Almenning or Holberg's Common {almenning means 
ground belonging to all men alike). It is named in 
honor of a Bergen man, Ludvig Holberg, who was 
in the eighteenth century one of the most popular 
authors in Europe. He was born in Bergen and spent 
some of his early years here, but lived most of his 
life in Copenhagen, where he became a professor. He 
traveled a good deal for those days, and became an 
exceedingly wise and witty student of human nature. 
His comedies and verse are still popular, especially in 
Scandinavia and Germany; anybody who has access 
to a large public library can find English translations 

Posit ipin $7^. Map 6 



142 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

of parts of his works in Howitt's Literature and 
Romance of Northern Europe. One of the comedies, 
The Man Without a Minute, is a deUciously funny 
picture of a fussy, over-important person, whose mind 
works helter-skelter, who fancies himself desperately 
busy over important concerns, and who really ac- 
complishes nothing at all. He and his absurdities 
are as well known to readers of Danish as Bob Acres 
in Sheridan's Rivals is to readers of English. 

One of the most celebrated of all Norway's valleys 
and fjords lies northeast of Bergen. The general map 
of southern Norway (Map 2) shows the Sognefjord 
opening among innumerable ragged islands just above 
61° latitude, and reaching crookedly in, far in east- 
ward, with many arms and inlets. It is, in fact, more 
than one hundred miles that the sea does reach up 
through deep clefts of the broken land. Find Bergen 
once more on this map, so as to have in mind the 
relative situation of that town and the southeastern 
inlets of the Sognefjord. The red oblong set off on 
the map, northeast of Bergen, tells us that section of 
country will be found mapped by itself on a larger 
scale. We find the special map (Eastern Sognefjord 
district) marked Map 7. 

Travelers going overland from Bergen to the inner 
valleys of the Sognefjord usually cover the first sev- 
enty miles of the journey by using the railway already 
mentioned. At the eastern terminus, Vossevangen, 
stolkjaerres are hired, and the excursion is continued 
with horse and post-boy as before. The country 
around Vossevangen is exceptionally good farming 
land, and the hotels and boarding-houses are very 
popular in summer, lx)th with Norwegians from 

Po9it|p9 53. Map 7 



XORWAV THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 1A^> 

Bergen and Christiania and with foreign visitors. 
Six or seven miles beyond the village our road passes 
an unusually fine waterfall; if we pause there for a 
moment we shall find it not at all a lonely place — 
there will be companions a-plenty. Our standpoint is 
marked with a red 53 near the lower margin of 
Map 7. 

Fositiou 53, Children at play in a farmer* s field 
before terraced Tvindefoa near Vossevangen 

Direction — Northwest. Surroundings — We are just 
off the highway, with fields close by and hills off be- 
hind us. 

A fine new house stands only a few rods away ; this 
is an old farmhouse which has been here a longtime. 
You see we have come once more into the region of 
sod-covered roofs, and tall hay-driers. Those tall 
poles leaning against the end of the house are such 
as the farmer used to construct the hay racks. The 
field over there on the distant slope looks from here 
like a patch of potatoes. 

It is about three hundred feet the water descends 
from that precipice to the level of the highway. It is 
on its way to the fjord above Bergen. 

Some of these children are here only for the sum- 
mer vacation — two of them are wearing the pretty 
Norwegian peasant clothes — the others have nothing 
distinctive about their costume. Nowadays city 
children from Bergen and city children from 
England are dressed in nearly the same 
style. Norwegian and English children could play 
together very readily, so many popular games are 
common to the neighbor lands — "tag," "blindman's 

Position 53. Map 7 



144 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

buff," "puss-iii-the-conier/' all have Norse equivalents, 
and other games, peculiar to Norway, can be easily 
learned. Indeed, little English folks know a great many 
stories which were originally written in Danish (or 
Norwegian — practically the same tongue). All the fas- 
cinating tales by Hans Christian Andersen circulated 
here before they were translated into English. The 
fairy stories of Moe and Asbjornsen* were the de- 
light of Norwegian youngsters before ever a London 
publisher could bring them out in a British version. 
They are among the best fairy tales extant, quaint, 
picturesque, with intimate homely touches of domestic 
detail, such as make the Mdrchen of the German 
brothers Grimm beloved by children everywhere. The 
fantastic, the grotesque, the preposterously absurd, are 
all so interwoven with familiar, matter-of-fact details 
of everyday life, that none but the most drearily un- 
imaginative child could help feeling a deHcious thrill 
of reality in each tale as a whole. The Norse story 
of ^'Wooden Jacket" has a Cinderella sort of heroine. 
The Norse adventures of "Herr Peter" read like our 
own "Puss in Boots." 

Norse folk-stories over and over again have for 
their hero the youngest son of a family ; sometimes the 
youth has several elder brothers, at all events, there 
are pretty sure to be two older youths, whose dis- 
agreeable faults set off the hero's fine spirit and 
courage in a most effective way. Trolds, giants and 
goblins figure largely in the popular stories, and some- 
way they do not like to have their names pronounced 
by mortals. Over and over again one comes upon the 
tradition that the evil power of a trold is nullified if 
one can learn the uncanny creature's name and cry it 

*See page 358. 



Position S3. Map 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOl'E 145 

aloud. Just how it should be so, . . . but why 
inquire? Children themselves never do inquire! 

A few miles northeast of the farmhouse and the 
waterfall leaping from stair to stair over the terraced 
cliffs, the road runs along near a little river with 
rocky banks. The red 54 on Map 7 near its lower 
margin, indicates a place where we shall linger a few 
minutes to see how farmers utilize small portions of 
the local water-power. 

Position 54, A log-built mill and a water-wheel 
grindstone on Stalbeim River 

Direction — W'e are facing northwest. Surround- 
ings — The highway which we have been following is 
up behind us at the left. The river lies at our right. 

Nobody has yet calculated how much energy — 
milhons, billions, of horse-power — runs to waste, 
commercially speaking, among the Scandinavian 
mountains. Probably Norway's water-power is suf- 
ficient to run all the factories of continental Europe, 
but only the merest inconsiderable fraction of it is 
forced into any utilitarian scheme for industrial 
activity. Farmers do, however, avail themselves of 
some of the numberless opportunities to get their lum- 
ber sawed, their oats and barley ground into coarse 
meal, and their tools sharpened. Right here a little 
mountain brook is captured as it comes racing down 
to jump into the river ; one slender portion of the 
stream, diverted into that sluiceway of planks, is now 
turning a heavy grindstone. The little old mill itself 
looks as if business were not very lively, but it is pic- 
turesquely suggestive of the way people live close to 
Nature. Froude, the English historian, wrote once 
after a tour through this country : — 



Position 54. Map 7 



146 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

"1 confess for myself that, sublime as the 
fjords were, the saw-mills and farmhouses and 
fishing-boats, and the patient, industrious people 
wresting a wholesome living out of that stern 
environment, affected me much more nearly/' 

A prosperous farmer living on an isolated farm 
needs a mill of his own almost as much as a barn of 
his own to save him the necessity of carrying grain 
twice over a steep, hard road. In old times such a 
farmer was his own blacksmith, too, having a forge 
of his own ready for need. Saw-mill, grist-mill, 
blacksmith-shop, cloth-mill, tannery, carpenter and 
joiner shop — a whole group of such establishments in 
crude and primitive, but practically effective form, 
made up the old-fashioned farmer's estabUshment. Now 
modern innovations are creeping in more and more. 
The women weave less homespun stuff. At Stal- 
heim's Hotel, a few miles farther on, they use wheat 
flour grown and ground in America! 

We are on our way to Stalheim's now. There is a 
stolkjaerre waiting for us in the highway up at the 
left. The telegraph poles gleaming here and there 
among the trees lead the way — wherever they go one 
may safely follow, sure of reaching some hospitable 
shelter. 

The road gradually mounts higher and higher above 
the river and comes out on a plateau overlooking a 
long valley — one of tke most celebrated valleys in 
Europe. Be sure to look up our fifty-fifth standpoint 
on Map 7, not far from the two previous positions. 
See — the red lines indicate definitely that we are to 
look down a narrow valley towards the upper end 
of one of the Sognefjord's long, crooked inlets. 

Posltton 54. Map j 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 147 

PoBition 5s, Stalbeim's Hotel and its superb view 
through the f anions Nserodal 

Direction — We are looking east-northeast, towards 
the head of the fjord, though the water is not in 
sight. Surroundings — This mountain-side rises still 
higher behind us. The little mill which we lately saw 
is now oft* at our right and behind us, considerably 
lower down. 

These stiff, shy little damsels are the children of a 
farmer not far away. It would be interesting to 
know how far they appreciate the glories of such a 
scene as this. People come half way around the 
world to get the view we have now, looking off over 
the valley. There is a good deal of latent poetry in 
the Norse temperament, and very likely the children 
are more or less impressed by the landscape splendor, 
though the effect probably suffers with them from 
over-familiarity. 

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, years ago, put beauti- 
fully into words the experience of a Norwegian boy 
about the same age as these children, when he climbed 
for the first time up from his home in the bottom of 
a narrow valley to a place where earth and sky opened 
all around him as they do here. 

"To him, who had never been used to see 
more than a few rods around him, the change 
was so sudden and so unexpected that for a 
moment he had a sensation as if he was losing 
his breath, or as if the earth had fallen from 
under his feet and he had been left floating in 
the air. . . . The immense distance dazzled 
his unwonted eye. ... He drew a long, full 
breath ; surely he had never known the delight of 
breathing before. A throng of childish plans 
crowded into his mind ; half-hidden dreams, half- 
born hopes revived and came forth into light. 

Po£itioo 55. Map 7 



148 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

They had not had room while they were crowded 
together down in the dark, narrow valley."* 

It has been raining and the clouds are just breaking 
away; the distance, as we see, is still shadowed by 
clouds. That curious, thimble-shaped mountain is the 
Jordalsnut. It is almost 3,500 feet from the valley 
floor up to its summit. The mountains on the opposite 
side of the valley are the Koldafjeld and Aaxel — all 
three are mostly a beautiful silvery gray feldspar or 
"Labrador" rock, forming a splendid contrast to the 
wooded heights nearer where we stand. Away down 
there in the valley we can see the same river that we 
saw beside the old mill (Position 54), only it is now 
at a much lower level. In order to get down into the 
valley it has leaped over a tall cliff — we shall presently 
see it making the plunge. 

That fine, large hotel is one of the best known inns 
in all the north of Europe. Twice it has been burned, 
but each time the rebuilding has brought still greater 
popularity and prosperity. /\lmost every foreign 
tourist is certain to come here, whatever else he does 
or leaves undone. During the short tourist season 
the house, large as it is, becomes full to overflowing. 
It is managed on much the same plan as any good 
hotel in Christiania or Bergen, so far as bed and 
table are concerned ; that is, everything is modern and 
comfortable, and the meals are such as one might ex- 
pect in a large town. There is a good deal of social 
gayety here — band concerts, dances — the usual variety 
of entertainment for summer hotel guests, and visitors 
naturally do some mountain climbing. An interesting 
ascent for the ambitious is that of the extraordinary 
cone of Jordalsnut yonder — not really dangerous, but 

*From Gunnar, a Norse Romance. 



Poshioo yS' m;*p 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THIO STERF.OSCOPE 149 

difficult enough to require a local guide who knows 
every obscure turn of the route and every symptom 
of the sky. A sudden rainstorm, such as often sweeps 
over this valley, is one thing when you are snugly 
settled at Stalheim's with a blazing fire on the hearth, 
a piano, books, and plenty of company. It is said to 
be a seriously different matter if you are cowering 
in a chilly crevice on the top of Jordalsnut, your 
clothes soggy with rain, your muscles sore with un- 
wonted use, and the lunch-basket empty ! 

It is no small height on which the hotel itself 
stands, though looking down on it as we do now we 
might easily underestimate its dignity. Beyond that 
terrace with the flag-staff the cliff drops almost straight 
eight hundred feet down to the valley floor below. 

That monumental stone on the neighboring cliff 
yonder, just over the little girl's head, commemorates 
a visit made here by Kaiser Wilhelm II.* 

It will be interesting after we leave here and ex- 
plore parts of the Sognefjord, to recall to mind the 
formation of this narrow valley which opens now 
ahead of us, for it is precisely that of a narrow fjord, 
lacking only salt water to cover the river bed and the 
winding highway and the little fields. If we can 
imagine water thus filling the bottom of the valley 
and reflecting the walls above, we have an idea how 
things are going to look presently when we reach the 
end of a seven-mile journey by that river road down 
to Gudvangen. 

There are several pleasant walks about Stalheim's, 
quite feasible for those who do not feel the fascina- 



*The monarchs of Norway and Germany have family connections though 
not related to each other. King Haakon is nephew and son-in-law to Queen 
Alexandra and King Edward of England. Kaiser Wilhelm is the nephew of 
King Edward of England. 

Position 55. Map 7 



150 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

tion of adventurous mountain climbing. One such 
ramble would take us to a point which is now off at 
our left. The place is marked 56 on the map. Look 
it up on the map and notice how the red lines run — 
they promise an outlook almost at right angles to the 
one we have just been enjoying. 

Position 56. The zigzag mountain road up to Stal- 
heim^s Hotel on a cliff above the Nserodal 

Direction — We are facing now about south. Sur- 
roundings — Steep, rocky pastures are all about us, 
dotted with berry-bushes and birches; dark pines and 
firs cover still higher slopes around us. 

There is Stalheim's again, and we can now get more 
of an idea of the cliff (Stalheimsklev) on which it 
stands. Our last position (55) was up on that steep 
hill which now shows above the hotel, at the right. 
The long valley which then faced us is now pff at our 
left. Directly facing us at this moment we can see 
little Stalheim river making a valiant leap to the val- 
ley below, and getting torn to snowy rags in the 
process. 

Those heights which close in the southern horizon 
straight ahead, stand between us and parts of the 
country which we have already seen. Forty miles or 
so from here, in a nearly straight line, are the Skjseg- 
gedal Falls (Position 42), and about as far beyond 
them in turn lies Roldal, where we saw the haymakers 
and the village by the lake (Positions 32-33). 

That zigzag road looks steep, but it is really about 
three times as steep as it looks! It shows disad- 
vantageously from this point of view, we ourselves 
standing at so much higher a point that the remark- 
able grade is considerably foreshortened. That is the 

Position 56. Map 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 151 

road all horses have to take to get down into the val- 
ley on the way to the fjord. If tourists from an ex- 
cursion steamer come up to Stalheim's just for the 
day, they often leave the horses down at the base of 
the long hill and ascend on foot. There are short-cuts 
across the zigzags for those who wish to save time by 
means of a stiff climb. 

It is a mountain paradise up here in July and Au- 
gust. The big, airy openness has something splendidly 
inspiring about it, and during the brief midsummer 
everything hastens to grow and to bloom. As Jonas 
Lie, the Norwegian story-teller, somewhere says of 
summer in his native land : — 

"It is as though the sun kisses Nature all the 
more lovingly because he knows how short a time 
they have to be together, and as if they both, for 
the time, try to forget they must part so soon." 

Wild flowers bloom gayly all over these hills, many 
of them the same that are common in America. 
Strawberries ripen sweet and juicy in the short grass. 
Bilberries absorb the hot sunshine and the fragrant 
air till their plump skins can hold no more. Butter- 
flies chase each other over the slopes. Meditative 
goats wander about, browsing on the short, thick 
grass, apparently free, like this one dozing on the 
rock, but really under the shrewd surveillance of some 
sharp-eyed boy or girl sent from a distant farmhouse. 

But it is time for us to proceed down into the 
valley. 

As one goes down that road, another beautiful 
waterfall is seen on this side of the valley to match the 
gleaming ribbon of Stalhcim River. 

Position 56. Map 7 



152 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position 5^, The Sevlefos, dashing and splashing, 
near Stalheim's Hotel in the Nsdrodal 

Direction — North-northwest. 

There is no end to the Norwegian waterfalls, but 
each one seems to have special beauty of its own. 
This particular cascade is one familiar to thousands of 
tourists who come to stand right where we are stand- 
ing now and gaze at that never-ceasing downpour over 
the broken stairs. 

Once down in the bottom of the valley which we 
saw from behind Stalheim's (at Position 55), the 
highway follows the crooked lead of the river along 
between towering walls of mountains. 

Position ^8. Rocky Jordalsnut (3620 feet), from be- 
side the road £lled with tourists^ carts 

Surroundings — Behind us runs the river, and be- 
yond it rise other mountains nearly as steep as those 
that are in sight. 

That bare, bald crown of old Jordalsnut is certainly a 
most extraordinary formation. It looks from here as if 
it would be impossible to find foothold for scaling such 
precipices, but the ascent is practicable in certain 
places. The rock is mostly silvery gray feldspar. 

The nearer slope, strewn with debris, shows the 
work of a landslide earlier in the season, most likely 
when the frost came out of rocks and ground in the 
spring, releasing a great mass of splintered fragments 
which had been frozen fast to the mountain during the 
winter. Such avalanches are necessarily rather com- 
mon here in Norway, but, on the whole, they do com- 
paratively little serious damage. 

These wagons have all come up from the steamboat 
wharf at Gudvangen, five or six miles away, bringing 



Positions 57=58. Map 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 153 

tourists for a day's excursion to Stalheim's. Now 
while the horses wait here the passengers are doubt- 
less climbing that steep zigzag road, which we lately 
saw (from Position 56), or refreshing themselves 
after such a tramp with a good dinner at the hotel. 

Horses like these have a fairly comfortable life, in 
spite of the loads they have to pull. Of course, they 
are sometimes sadly overworked, like the poor beast 
in Jonas Lie's story of Little Grey (Nordfjordhesten) , 
or stupidly ill-treated by some quick-tempered youth, 
hke the one whom Synnove Solbakken* afterwards 
tamed into manly self-control. As a rule, however, 
the Norwegians are good to their animals, and treat 
them as well as they know how. The men themselves 
will probably spend this interval of waiting in smok- 
ing and talking politics. Norsemen are stubbornly 
argumentative among themselves, and take sides with 
vigorous decision on all sorts of public questions, 
helped out with more or less one-sided statements of 
facts in partisan newspapers to which they subscribe. 
Anybody who knows how people discuss politics in 
American country districts, has a pretty good idea of 
such arguments over here. Indeed, in a gathering 
like this there may easily happen to be some fellow 
who has been in America, and can quote precedents 
of transatlantic success or failure — apropos of some 
of the subjects talked over. In old times a man who 
had been to America and returned was something of 
a lion, and received a good deal of frank deference 
from his less traveled neighbors. Now that returned 
travelers are more common, they have somewhat less 
prestige, partly because they brag too much about 
American ways. Norwegian patriotism involves a 



•See Bjomson's story with thnt title. 



Positlofi 58. Map 7 



154 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

peculiarly sensitive pride which will not willingly 
allow praise of any other land implying criticism of 
this one. It is a good object lesson for some Britons 
and Americans, who have the same fault and rather 
pride themselves thereon! Ibsen and Bjornson have 
for years been loyally striving to cure this sort of 
sentimental vanity in Norway, by showing up with 
the artist's relentless pen the sordid, narrow, unclean 
and ugly side of Norwegian life as well as its noble 
and beautiful side. "Faithful are the wounds of a 
friend." In his own time Ibsen suffered so much 
abuse from his misunderstanding countrymen, that 
he might well know how to write An Enemy of 
Society as the satirical picture of a reformer's ex- 
periences; ... all the same he bravely did the 
work he had deliberately laid out for himself — "to 
rouse the nation and lead it to think great thoughts."* 

Our next position is to be at the northern end of 
the valley, just where the sea reaches in. We find the 
place marked 59 on the map. 

Position sg. Gudvangen'a outlook over the Nsero- 
fjord, where the sea reaches far in among the 
mountains 

Direction — We are now facing north. Stalheim's is 
behind us and somewhat off at the west (left). Sur- 
roundings — The two summer hotels and the few other 
buildings that together make up Gudvangen are on 
the shore at our left. They are hardly enough to be 
counted as a village. 

The bottom of the valley must drop a good deal 
between us and those vessels, for right here the cows 



*See his dramas and piiMished letters. 



Position 59. Map 7 



NOR\\AV THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 155 

only wet their ankles, wading in as they have to cool 
off during the noonday heat. The stolkjaerres which 
we just met on the valley road had carried up pas- 
sengers from the excursion boats, and will soon bring 
many of them back to continue the journey by water. 
It requires a voyage of a hundred miles to reach open 
sea, although this marvelous mirror before us is part 
of the salt ocean. The channel winds in and out be- 
tween those mountains that we see ahead at the 
north; after several miles it opens into somewhat 
wider and still deeper waters between other moun- 
tains at our left, and the vessels' course is then ap- 
proximately westward. The map (7) will make it 
perfectly plain. 

Now we see, as we had anticipated, how this fjord 
is like the valley above, with its bed filled by the salt 
sea instead of by one rocky river and some tiny fields. 
The space directly around us at this minute is so 
closely walled around with mountains at the east, 
south and west that for several weeks in midwinter 
the sun never gets high enough in the sky to send a 
single ray of direct sunshine down to the Gudvangen 
houses. In midsummer, on the contrary, the moun- 
tains reflect the heat back and forth across the nar- 
row space till it is sometimes breathlessly warm here, 
and one would be glad to follow the example of the 
cows. 

Sometimes a gun is fired on one of the excursion 
steamers, to show off the echoes, and the roar is like 
that of powerful artillery. 

In a region like this, one gradually grows into the 
spirit of the country and recalls with increasing sym- 
pathy of understanding the old Saga accounts of 
giants and heroes, of big, bold adventures and gigantic 
jokes, and battles unto death with mysterious Powers. 

Position 59. Map 7 



156 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Was it possibly some thought of a long, crooked fjord 
like this one, which lay behind the old story of how 
the god Thor tried to empty the magic drinking-horn 
in the giant's banqueting hall? He almost did it, 
but had to give up, overwhelmed with shame until his 
host explained that it was the whole surging Sea he 
had tried to drain through the horn! As for the 
ancient tradition about how Thor used to hurl his 
hammer, M joiner, at the evil giants, calling it back 
to him after each stroke, ready for another — one good, 
heavy thunderstorm here at Gudvangen would make 
anybody believe the old days were come again, with 
Thor in the thick of a fight ! 

Before we go, do notice that slender thread of a 
waterfall that sways from the edge of cliff and sky 
up ahead there at the left. It is like the one Prince 
Henry pointed out to Elsie, as they went through the 
Swiss Alps : — 

"Over our heads a white cascade is gleaming 
against the distant hill ; 
We cannot hear it nor see it move, but it 
hangs like a banner when winds are still."* 

And did you ever see a farmer's pasture set so 
nearly on end as the one which slopes to the fjord 
just below? 

Travelers without number have come here, and 
afterwards tried to describe the place, but it is almost 
impossible to put one's impressions into words. Prob- 
ably Bayard Taylor, who was one of the first to write 
about it, fifty years ago, succeeded best. He recorded 
in his Northern Travel, already many times quoted : — 
"The Gudvangen Fjord, down which we now^ 
glided over the glassy water, is a narrow moun- 
tain avenue of glorious scenery. Unseen plateaux 

*The Golden Legend. 



Position 59. Map 7 



NORWAY TPIROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 157 

. . . Spilled their streams over precipices from 
1,000 to 2,000 feet in height, above whose 
cornices shot the pointed summits of bare, gray 
rocks, wreathed in shifting clouds, 4,000 feet 
above the sea. Pine trees feathered the 
less abrupt steeps, with patches of dazzling turf 
here and there, and, wherever a gentler slope 
could be found in the coves, stood cottages, sur- 
rounded by potato-fields. . . . Not a breath 
of air rippled the dark water, which was a perfect 
mirror to the mountains and the strip of sky be- 
tween them." 

There are some interesting short-distance walks 
about Gudvangen; one is by a path along the west 
side of the fjord. If we take that path now we shall 
get a glimpse of some of the queer, strolling folk 
that American and English people call gipsies. The 
map marks their location 60, a little way around the 
point below the steamboat landing. 

Position 60. Where the road creeps under the jutting 
cliffs by the waters of the Nserofjord 

Direction — We are facing south, i. e., back towards 
Gudvangen. The hotels and the steamboat pier are 
ahead and around at our right. Surroundings — 
Steep, ragged cliffs rising overhead and behind us, 
and other cliffs as high over on the opposite side of 
the narrow fjord. 

Those long, white streaks on the mountain opposite 
are more waterfalls. All along the fjord it is like 
that. Streams come down, as it were, from the very 
roof of the world, to tell of unseen icy wastes far 
above. 

This girl with the immaculate white apron is a 
Norwegian maid from one of the hotels; the lady 



Positioo 60. Map 7 



158 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

sitting on the bank yonder is a tourist; but the other 
woman, the child, the dog, and the boat, belong to a 
little band of gipsies encamped here. Such bands are 
rare in Norway, and yet common enough for the 
country people to be used to them and to have no fear 
of them, except, perhaps, in the way of petty thieving. 
The wandering folk have here, as elsewhere, a reputa- 
tion for being light-fingered, though, to do them jus- 
tice, no offence is often proven against them. A Nor- 
wegian author* many years ago made a special study 
of their manners, customs and language; they would 
seem to be at least akin to the wanderers who sing, 
dance, and tell fortunes in Spain, England and other 
parts of Europe. An Englishman who had become an 
enthusiast in gipsy lore once brought three English 
gipsies over here to Norway, and spent a whole sum- 
mer with them, roaming about the country with 
donkeys, tents and camp supplies, hoping to fall in 
with such people as this woman with the baby. As it 
happened, they met no Norwegian gipsies at all the 
whole season, but they themselves had "the time of 
their lives," and the organizer of the expedition, Mr. 
Hubert Smith, wrote an entertaining book about the 
summer's happenings.f Over and over again, as he 
relates, both Norwegian country people and foreign 
tourists came to see them, to admire their tent, to 
wonder at the unfamiliar donkeys, and to dance to 
their music. 

Evidently these gipsies do their traveling by boat 
instead of overland, a very convenient method, too, 
for this Sognefjordt alone has more than two hun- 

*Eilert Sundt. 

liTent Life in Norway with English Gipsies. 

tThe name "Naen.f jord " is the local name of this particular inlet. "Sog- 
nefjord" is the inclusive name. 



Posftioo 60. Map 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE If)!) 

dred miles of banks, though, of course, not all are 
so invitingly easy of access as this spot right here. 

Just one more glimpse near Gudvangen before we 
go away — there is a particularly beautiful sight to be 
seen when the wind is asleep, about a mile below the 
pier. Look for 61 on Map 7, and see what the red 
lines have to say about the outlook. 

Position 6i, Looking down the deep, still Nseiofjotd 
from near Gudvangen 

Direction — We are facing northeast, the way an out- 
ward bound steamer would have to go. Surroundings 
— Mountains, more mountains are behind us. The 
place has every appearance of being an inland lake. 

Was there ever a clearer mirror for earth and 
heaven ? 

This is the sort of thing beloved by every Norse- 
man with any poetry in his soul. Boyesen used to 
dwell on such sights over and over with the tireless 
aflfection of a lover: — 

"The fjord looked as if it wanted to speak, 
but was too happy to find expression, therefore 
it remained silent; but it gazed at the wan- 
derers, with those strange, speaking, though 
speechless, eyes, which no one ever forgets who 
has once penetrated to the heart of Norway."* 

Or, again, such a sight as this may typify some 
tragic experience of the soul, as it does in Bjornson's 
Labor emus: — 

"The ocean yearns for the land — restlessness 
surrounding that which is stable. Remember that 



♦From Gunnar. 



Position 61. Map 7 



160 NORWAY THROUGH THE STERP:OSCOPE 

the ocean reflects also the sky. . . . With 
what melancholy must not the ocean look into 
eternity! What a yearning! The land it can- 
not move. The sky it cannot reach." 

These marvelous reflections suggest positively dizzy 
depths below, and, for aught we know, they really may 
not be so far wrong. It is claimed on good au- 
thority that in some places along the Sognefjord the 
water actually is from 2,000 to 4,000 feet deep ! 

The sea is not always like this. As one might ex- 
pect among such mountains, sudden winds often 
start, and not infrequently turn into a squall danger- 
ous for anyone not perfectly familiar with boats. 
Vessels the size of the excursion steamers are always 
safe, for their voyages are by daylight, and every rod 
of the way is personally known to the pilots. 

The shores of the Sognefjord have many times 
served as the setting for Norwegian tales and 
romances. Farther up towards the eastern limits of 
the great branching inlet, Bjornson located the events 
of Magnhild. Our own route, as we find it traced on 
the map, turns northwestward after we get fully out 
into the main body of the fjord, and our next position 
is on the shore of another arm or vik of the main 
fjord. (See No. 62 on Map 7.) 

Position 6s, I^ooking across J^sse fjord from Tjugum. 
to mountainside homes below ice-covered Kjeipen 

Direction — We are facing nearly westward. Sur- 
roundings — The main fjord lies off behind us. 

Somewhere in this immediate vicinity tradition 
locates the immensely popular old romance of Frithiof 
and Ingeborg, retold many times (best of all by Esaias 
Tegner of Sweden, in his Frithiof s Saga), 



Position 62. Map 7 



NOKW AV TllHDCGlI THE STEREOSCOPE 161 

after the original version in an old Norse Saga. Vari- 
ous localities have been fancifully identified as the 
place where the hero's house stood — most people think 
it was nearly opposite here on the south side of the 
fjord, on a point where the map sets down the hamlet 
of Vangsnes (Framnes). 

"Peaceful he heired. sole son to his father, 

and settled in Framnes. 
Far to the right and the left and behind his 

homestead ascended 
Hills and low valleys and rocks, but its fourth 

side fronted the ocean." 

Thousands of readers in many lands in different 
parts of the world have read that old story of fond 
lovers kept apart by family pride, of wild adventure, 
and sorrow, and wrongs revenged. 

Those houses whose whitewashed walls and red 
roofs gleam so gaily from among the trees are the 
homes of rich Norwegians; a number of city people 
have summer places in this vicinity, and hotels and 
boarding-houses along this part of the fjord are well 
patronized. 

A good many muscular young Norsemen accumu- 
late some welcome kroner during the summer by row- 
ing tourists and summer boarders in boats like this or 
heavier craft. Can you see that these rowlocks are 
curiously different from ours? The oar is slipped 
through a stout loop of rope (sometimes it would be 
just a tough twisted rope of birch twigs), fastened to 
a single projecting pin. It does not encourage 
"feathering" one's oars, but it answers every practical 
purpose of moving steadily and with reasonable 
speed. There are regularly fixed tariff rates for the 
hire of boats, somewhat similar to the schedule for 
stolkjaerres on land. Boats of different sizes and 

Position 62. Map 7 



162 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

weights are classified according to the number of 
oars required. Each rorskarl (oarsman) usually 
handles two oars. If two men are required the boat 
is described as a Hrrmg (four-oared boat) ; if three 
men row, it is a sexring; sometimes a big boat on a 
windy day may need four men — that is an ottring. 
Payment is according to the boat used and the number 
of men needed — not necessarily with strict regard to 
the number of passengers. The fees are very small. 
Two men would row you a mile (almost two kilo- 
meters) for less than ten cents apiece. 

Almost everybody living along the fjord here knows 
how to row. The men and boys learn to swim. The 
water is, however, too cold for sea bathing to be gen- 
erally practised as a recreation, even if there were 
good beaches, as there are not. A good many old 
stories are still told of the splendid vigor and skill of 
the Vikings who lived in such places in earlier times. 
This sort of thing, for instance, is related as showing 
what they could do when they tried : — 

''One day as Herraud and Bosi sailed near the 
land in a strong gale, a man standing on a rock 
asked to be allowed to go with them. Herraud 
said they could not go out of their course for 
him, but, if he could reach the boat, he might 
go with them. The man jumped from the rock 
and came down on the tiller ; it was a leap of 
thirty feet."* 

People who live near the fjords naturally do a 
good deal of fishing. As one sails through in an ex- 
cursion steamer, one sees again and again a tall tri- 
angle of weather-beaten timbers rising from the edge 
of the water, sometimes bare, sometimes hung with 



♦Quoted by Du Chaillu from Herraud and Bosi's Saga. 



Position 62. Map 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 163 

huge nets like a species of giant clothes-drier. A short 
walk southwest of our last position, a certain point is 
marked 63 on the map. It will be found directly on 
the shore of the main fjord. There we have a chance 
to examine the characteristic apparatus at our leisure. 

Position 63, Fisherman arranging salmon nets at 
Balestrand on the Sognefjord; Balholm in the 
distance 

Direction — We are now looking nearly north. 
Surroundings — Our last position, where we saw the 
rorskarl with his passenger, was ahead and off at 
our right, beyond that long, low, tree-covered point. 
This is just a cove of the fjord where we are now — 
the main body of water is off at our right, dropping to 
unknown depths. 

The tide is low just now, so a broad expanse of 
rock lies bare. The houses over on the farther curve 
of the cove, beyond the festooned fishing nets, are 
those of Balholm village, a popular Norwegian sum- 
mer resort. Edvard Grieg, the famous musical com- 
poser, and a good many of his distinguished country- 
men, have spent vacations there during the heat of 
midsummer. 

Only twenty or twenty-five years ago there used to 
be bears in the woods behind the village, indeed one 
man was killed during a bear hunt in 1881, but now 
the savage creatures are nearly extinct in this part of 
the country. 

This is one of the local salmon ladders. During the 
latter part of April each year salmon begin to come 
up the fjord in countless numbers, on the way to 
fresh-water streams, where they always resort at the 
spawning season. From the first of May to the 



Posrtioo 63. Map 7 



164 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

twenty-sixth of August, the law maintains an open 
season for salt-water salmon fishing,* and here is 
one of several thousand similar devices for ensnaring 
part of the migrating multitude. The apparatus is so 
rigged that the noter (nets) can easily be let down 
under these shallow waters close along shore, to lie 
there anchored in place by weights such as we see 
now gleaming here and there among the meshes. The 
fisherman waits up there at the top of the "ladder" 
and watches quietly, looking from his point of vantage 
directly down into the clear waters above the 
stretched-out net. The salmon, as they come up the 
fjord, swim along largely in these shallower waters 
along-shore, looking for the entrance of fresh-water 
streams, and, when conditions are right, large num- 
bers will soon be seen swimming directly over the 
net, as it lies inconspicuously and apparently innocent 
on the bottom. Then suddenly the fisherman hauls 
the net up by a pulley conveniently at hand, bringing 
out a very good catch if his judgment and dexterity 
are of the best. Of course, any true amateur despises 
this unsportsmanlike method of procedure, but the 
men who practise it are after bread-and-butter, not 
sport. 

Nets like these must have a mesh of not less than 
2.56 inches, and they cannot be used every day. Each 
week the law prescribes a "close" time, lasting from 
6 P. M. Friday to 6 P. M. Monday. The fishing is 
not likely to be exhausted. 

It is said that some fishermen have resorted to the 
trick of painting rocks white at some one spot on a 
shore like this, to resemble tne gleam of falling 



*Salmon may be taken with rod and line in fresh-water streams itntil the 
middle of September. 



Position 63. Map 7 



NORWAY THROUGH THIC STERi'.OSOOI'j: 165 

water, and so to attract the fish in-shore ; but that may 
not be true. It seems like a rather mean trick to play 
on even a salmon. 

The best river fishing for salmon is nowadays leased 
by the season or for a long term of years, most of it 
to rich sportsmen from Great Britain. 

One of the old Eddas tells why the salmon has a 
thin, pointed tail. It seems that long, long ago, Loke, 
the Scandinavian Satan, had worked so much mischief 
that the gods felt they must make an example of him, 
and he fled before their wrath. They sought him 
everywhere, in order to deal out the punishment he 
richly deserved, but for a while his crafty cunning 
eluded them. At one time, when they had almost 
captured him, he turned himself into a salmon. Thor, 
shrewdly surmising what had happened, snatched up 
a magic net of Loke's own weaving and caught him, 
Jiolding him by the tail. If you do not believe it, look 
at a salmon and see how its tail to this day shows the 
pinch of Thor's fingers on that slippery ancestor, ages 
ago! 

Bishop Moe wrote, many years ago, of a place like 
this : — 

''Softly, lightly, the evening dies 

(^Id-red upon headlands and waves without number, 
.And a soundless silence tenderly lies 

And rocks all Nature to dreamless slumber. 
Meadow and dingle 
Reflected mingle 
With waves that flash over sand and shingle 
In one dim light. 

Ah, slim is the fisherman's boat, and yet 

High on the glittering wave it soars : 
The fisherman bends to his laden net, 

While the girls are hushed at the silent oars. 



Position 63. Map 7 



166 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The soft emotion 
From vale and ocean 
Has quenched the noise of the day's commotion 
And bound it stilL"'^' 

We should now refer again to the general map of 
southern Norway (Map 2), and find both the Sogne- 
fjord, which we have been seeing (just north of 
latitude 61°), and the Nordfjord (a little south of 
latitude 62°). Our next excursions are to be to a 
group of famous fresh-water lakes, above the eastern 
end of the Nordfjord. Some tourists go overland 
from one fjord to the other; some voyage in one of 
the excursion steamers away out to the mouth of the 
Sognefjord, up along the coast and among the islands 
and so into the Nordfjord. Notice that a certain dis- 
trict east of the head of the Nordfjord is marked off 
by a red oblong. That district is shown by itself on 
a larger scale, in Map 8. 

Now examine Map 8. All the southern and south- 
eastern part of the map shows high land, covered 
with glacier ice, indeed that district is part of the big- 
gest glacier in all Europe. Find the long, narrow 
Olden Lake, lying north and south. Our sixty-fourth 
standpoint is marked near the north end of that lake. 

Position 64. Young farmers of the Nordfjord country 
before their turf-roofed cottage borne 

It is nearly eight o'clock in the evening, and cloudy 
besides, which accounts for the somewhat poor light. 

The young man with the short, many-buttoned coat, 
and the sheath-knife tucked in his belt, is Thor Eide, 
an excellent guide and a capital fellow for a com- 

*Translation taken from Gosse's Northern Studies. 



Position 64. Map 8 



NORWAV THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 167 

panion on a hand tramp. The girl is his sister, and 
this is the house where they Hve. 

Standing close by the sod roof, as we do now, we 
can plainly see the edges of the big sheets of birch 
bark that form the lining of the roof, next to the 
boarded rafters. That tall pole is for the display of a 
signal flag to certain boats on the lake below. Thor 
Eide is one of the best-known guides in this vicinity, 
and is kept busy with strangers during the tourist 
season, but he works on the little home farm at other 
times of year. 

Those low wooden wheels with the skeleton plat- 
form attached, constitute a hay-cart. A considerable 
load of hay or grain can be transported with its help 
from a field to the barn. The tall, slender stacks are 
grain, drying according to local methods. After being 
cut with a sickle, the grain is gathered up and tied in 
bunches, then the bunches are impaled one after 
another on tall stakes — one such stake down there on 
the slope between us and the water has not yet re- 
ceived its full quota to hold for the drying. Beyond 
the grain stacks we can see one of the long, fence- 
like hay-driers. 

The house is just an average country cottage for 
this district; you see it is built of heavy planks, not 
simply logs. The big cracks are protected on the in- 
side with a board sheathing, so that everything is snug 
and warm in winter. The house consists of a small 
entry-passage, two fair-sized rooms, and a loft above, 
the steep, sloping hillside allowing space for a sort of 
basement at the farther end, below the living room, 
for doing the heavier work, washing, and the like. 
The greater part of the furniture is home-made, out 
of pine and spruce wood. The beds are box-shaped 



Position 64. Map 8 



168 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

affairs, somewhat shorter than an English or Ameri- 
can bed, two sides being practically part of the wall of 
the room, and the other two sides supported by a post 
set in the floor. (Some houses have a cupboard or 
wardrobe closet built to fill in the space between two 
beds, which then practically occupy alcoves in tlie 
room.) Benches, chairs and tables are usually of un- 
painted wood. Sometimes a table is fastened by a 
hinge to the wall and supported when in use by one or 
two braces. If not needed, the braces are taken out 
and the table folds down flat against the wall, out 
of the way. The cooking is done in kettles hung over 
an open fire, or on plates of sheet-iron set over beds 
of glowing coals. 

In old times housekeepers used to strew the floor of 
a clean-swept room with finely broken twigs of juni- 
per, but that custom is now nearly obsolete. 

Most of the clothing worn b}^ the young people is 
home-made ; only Thor's cloth cap, and silk neck hand- 
kerchief, and the stout shoes worn by both were 
bought for money. This is the young girl's Sunday 
gown; the gay brooch with its dangling pendant, the 
bright embroidered bodice and that elaborately 
trimmed apron are details of costume which she might 
consider extravagant while about her housework, 
though the general style of her dress would always 
be pretty nearly what it is now. 

These particular young people do, of course, make 
friends among the summer tourists who come to see 
the region round about. Except for that, it would 
be a life with only a small circle of acquaintances and 
very little variety. Farmers hereabouts seldom have 
large families, and, small as the farms are, the work 
is so exacting that no large margin of time remains 



Position 64. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 169 

for visiting and holiday making. On the whole it 
would seem as if youthful spirits had not much to 
feed on in the way of social pleasures, yet people do 
seem to enjoy life and get a good deal of satisfaction 
out of the process of living. One of the best means 
of understanding how life looks from the standpoint 
of such young people, is, doubtless, to read Norse 
stories by Norse writers. A good many stories of 
country life are accessible in English,* and it is 
doubly interesting to read them after one has seen the 
country as we are seeing it now. 

Would you like to see where Thor Eide sharpens 
his haying tools and that sheath knife at his belt? 
That we can do at a spot only a short distance from 
a neighbor's house. (See 65 on the map.) 



Position 65. A farmer's water-power grindstone and 
sod-roofed grist-mill in deep Olden Valley 

See how ingeniously the sluices have been arranged, 
so that water can be used for turning this grindstone 
or for turning the wheels inside that little mill. 

The valley here is so deep-set between the moun- 
tains that we should have to look much higher than 
this to see any horizon at all. Streams are running 
down the mountain-sides all around us, comparatively 
few of them utilized in any way, so disproportionate 
is the water-power to practical needs. 

The best farm-tools are bought, but nearly all old- 
fashioned farmers have scythes that were made at 
liome years ago by grinding a mere strip of iron down 
to an edge. Some knives worn stuck in the belt, like 
Thor Eide's here, were thus ground dow^n by hand. 



See book titles on page 356. Position 65. Map 8 



170 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The Lapp people are also clever at that sort of work, 
and sell a good many of their knives to tourists. The 
most valuable knives have elaborately carved handles, 
as well as good blades, and some that are worn with 
as much pride as a costly watch, have sheaths of en- 
graved silver. These knives do not signify anything 
corresponding to the stiletto of the Sicilian, and the 
razor of the negro in the southern states of America, 
for Norwegians to-day are not given to bloody feuds, 
however much they may dispute and wrangle in words. 
Sheath knives here are like the omnipresent "jack- 
knife" in America, tools of general utility, with which 
every boy is proud to be equipped. It was a knife of 
this sort that Httle Gunnar's father gave him when he 
went for the first time away from home as a cow-herd 
for the widow Rimul.* 

To this little mill oats and barley are brought and 
ground into coarse meal between stones turned by 
water from that farther sluiceway. 

Not far from here, just a few rods farther up the 
valley, we can watch the harvesting of barley. The 
spot where we shall stand is marked 66 on the spe- 
cial map of the lake region at the head of the Nord- 
fjord (Map 8). 

Position 66, Harvesting barley on Mindresunde 
farm in the valley near Olden 

Direction — We are facing north, towards the lower 
end of the valley. Surroundings — The lake is only a 
few rods distant at our right. Away up above us 
at our left a mountain is towering, capped with ice 
and snow. 



*Gunnar, before quoted. 
Position 66. Map 8 



NORWAY TIIROUGII THE STEREOSCOPE 171 

This is an excellent faiin, belonging to a prosperous 
family. Those numerous barns and outbuildings make 
it look almost like a tiny hamlet. The grist-mill just 
over the head of that stooping man is the very one 
at which we have just been looking. Most of the 
thrifty farmers have them unless a neighbor's mill 
is particularly easy of access. The other buildings in- 
clude barns, cow stables, winter shelters for goats, 
pigs and hens, a granary, a storehouse for all sorts 
of household belongings packed in chests or hung 
from the rafters, a wash-house and various other an- 
nexes to the establishment. Bacon and ham are often 
cured in a smoke-house belonging to such a farm ; 
sometimes the master even has a forge of his own — 
life here has great possibilities of independence. 

The barley which they are cutting now will be tied 
in large handfuls, and then the bunches will be stuck 
on poles to dry after the manner in which we have 
already seen it. Over there in the distant field are 
stacks of some kind of grain already drying, probably 
barley, oats or rye. They say Norway barley has been 
known to grow two inches in twenty-four hours, so 
powerful is the effect of twenty hours' continuous 
sunshine such as they get here in clear July weather. 
Rye planted about the tenth of June sometimes grows 
taller than this man's head before the end of August. 
There is a wonderful generosity about Norway's 
scanty acres when Mother Earth does make up her 
mind to give! Naturally enough the primitive coun- 
try folk, before they had heard any preaching of 
Christianity, cherished the belief that among the many 
warring gods there was one whose mission was all 
kindness and goodness. Balder the Beautiful, the Sun 
God, brought the birds and the flowers and the warm 
sunshine: thanks to his beneficent smile, the earth 



Position 66. Map 8 



172 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

gave them food for themselves and for their cows 
and goats and sheep. No wonder that Midsummer 
Day was the happiest festival of the year, a time of 
public rejoicing. 

Taking the country as a whole, almost every other 
man in the kingdom to-day still gets his bread and 
butter directly from the soil, as these people do here 
(48^V per cent, is the official published figure.) In this 
part of Norway the population averages less than 
fifteen persons to a square mile — we shall presently see 
parts of one immense glacier that covers 500 square 
miles, thus helping to bring the average down. Almost 
everywhere, as here, women are in the majority — 
that is to be expected, when emigration figures reach, 
as they do, 25,000 in a single year, for, of course, men 
are most numerous among the emigrants, though Nor- 
wegian women face with admirable courage the prob- 
lems of life in a new land. 

Modern agricultural machinery is practically un- 
known. It is not needed on these small, rocky farms, 
even if the workers were not conservative by instinct ; 
but many of the people hereabouts know from letters 
and from hearsay about the marvelous doings that take 
place on the great wheat ranches of America and 
western Canada. Indeed, some of their own relatives 
and old friends over in Minnesota and Manitoba do 
harvesting with a huge horse-power machine, cutting, 
binding, threshing and sacking, as it moves along over 
a field, and doing as much work in one day as all the 
able-bodied people in this parish could do together in 
a week. 

A home like this is almost invariably hospitable; 
that has for centuries been the tradition of the coun- 
try. In the Elder Edda there is a delightful picture 
of a visit at a rich farmer's house : — 



Position 66. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 173 

**He came to a hall. 
The door was to the south 
And it was shut. 
A ring^ was in the door-post. 
Then he went in. 

The floor was strewn with rushes. 
The husband sat 
And twisted strings, 
Bent an elm, 
Shafted arrows. 

"The mother took 
A broidered cloth, 
A white one of flax, 
Covered the table; 
Then she took 
Thin loaves, 

Laid them on the cloth. 
Forth she set 
Full trenchers, 
Silver covered, 
On the table- 
Shining pork 
And roasted birds ; 
Wine was in a jug. 
They drank and talked, 
The day was passing away."t 



Now let us see Lake Olden itself. The map shows 
how long and narrow it is, so we shall not be sur- 
prised to find that, when we look across it from the 
spot marked 67 on the east bank, it looks almost like a 
river — not like a Norwegian river, though, for Norse 
streams seldom have a chance to lie so quietly in 
their beds ! 



*i.e., a iatch or handle. 

tOuoted by Du Chaillu from the Rigsmal of the Elder Edda. 



Pofition66. Map a 



174 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position 67. Grytereids Glacier glittering above 
drifting clouds, seen across placid I^ake Olden 

Direction — We are facing west. Surroundings — 
Behind us rises a very steep mountain pasture, where 
these goats have been feeding. 

The shining white above those fleecy clouds is solid 
ice — a part of the great Jokul (glacier) of Jostedal, 
the biggest in all Europe. It was just such a Jokul 
that Boyesen described in that wonderfully beautiful 
opening chapter of Gunnar, sparkling and glittering 
under the spring sunshine; *'it was almost merry, for 
it smiled at the sun's trying to melt it." And it was 
such a lake as this that he pictured as hearing the 
swallows tell about far-off lands and about the sea. 

The lake waters at our feet have a greenish tinge, 
and at the same time are somewhat milky in effect, be- 
cause they hold in suspension so much finely powdered 
rock-waste washed down from the glaciers that cap 
its high walls on both banks. That low hill just op- 
posite, on which the farmhouse stands, is an old 
moraine, or deposit of debris, left there by a glacier 
of long ago, which evidently once filled the steep val- 
ley above. Indeed, we have right before our eyes at 
this moment a sort of condensed, illustrated history 
of the material earth on which we live, brought up 
to date. 

Away up there next the sky are big, ragged ridges 
of the original stuff of which the earth is made, just 
as it cooled from liquid form, only broken by the con- 
traction and wrinkling and bulging of the hardened 
crust. Those clouds floating past are practically the 
same thing as the storm clouds of winter that blow 
over the heights in blasts of bitter cold, dropping their 
watery burden in the form of snow. The glacier, as 
we know, is snow compacted into solid ice. The 



Posft'ioa 67. Matp 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 175 

moraine down on the lake shore, facing us, is an 
accumulation of ground-up fragments of rock, torn 
from the cHffs during the descent of an ancient arm 
of the glacier, and pulverized under its moving 
weight, as barley is pulverized tinder a stone mill- 
wheel. The mosses and lichens coating the rocks 
right here at our feet show how vegetation first ap- 
pears, feeding on bare rock, digesting it and crumbling 
it, ready to serve as food for plants more critical in 
their appetite. The grass and bushes over on the 
moraine in their turn serve as food for browsing 
goats : the beasts, by means of their own simple, vital 
processes, turn grass and juicy twigs into milk, flesh 
and hairy hide, ready for the food and clothing of 
primitive man. 

And over there on the farther bank at the right 
gleam the walls of a home made by a twentieth cen- 
tury man, who tills the ground with cleverly devised 
tools, and harnesses the melting waters of the very 
glacier itself, making them grind his oats and barley. 

A little farther southward up the lake on that same 
west shore, two or three neighbor farms lie close 
under the mountain on another old glacial moraine, 
which gives soil for good fields. Our standpoint on 
the opposite, east bank, is marked 68 (Map 8). 



Position 68, Farmhouses of Yri nestled at the 
mountain's base. Yrifos pouring down from the 
glacier 

Direction — Again we are facing due west. SuV' 
roundings — Part of the same mountain, as before, 
looms up behind us. 

Sec how clear the pearly-green waters are ! Dwell- 



Positlon 68. Map S 



176 NORWAY TTTROUGTT TTIK STEREOSCOPE 

Ing and barns and that little boat-house down at the 
edge of the water are all repeated in the mirror be- 
low. Even the tumbling waterfalls have their re- 
flected dupHcate. 

Imagine being here on a midsummer night when 
everything is hushed, and yet the sky overhead is 
not dark, but full of the pale glow of a ghostly twilight. 
That sort of experience made a profound impression 
on Bjornson when he was a boy, a few miles from 
here, over in the Romsdal. He afterwards put the 
feeHng into words in the story of Arne, already 
quoted : — 

*'It was one of those Hght summer nights, when 
all things seem to whisper and crowd together, 
as if in fear. Even he who has from childhood 
been accustomed to such nights feels strangely 
influenced by them, and goes about, as if ex- 
pecting something to happen. Often the sky 
looks out between the pale clouds like an eye, 
watching . . ." 

One calamity which really might easily overwhelm 
homes like those, would be an avalanche of snow or 
of rocks and earth from that steep wall up behind the 
gaards (farms). Another of Bjornson's stories'-' be- 
gins with the destruction of such a farmhouse, and 
the survival of just one little girl out of a whole 
family. During the bewilderment of this tragic turn 
in her fortunes, Magnhild is struck by one remark 
she hears a neighbor make about herself: *'She must 
surely be destined for something great," and for 
years afterwards that idea haunts her like a vague 
invitation and command. Life in the family of the 



■Magnhild. 



Position 68. Map 8. 



NOR\\AY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 177 

country parson, who adopted her, seems to bring no 
opportunity for great things. Marriage with an 
eccentric man many years her senior brings disap- 
pointment. The story itself should be read, in order 
to appreciate how she finally came to realize that her 
life was not so narrow as she had thought it, but rich 
in unsuspected blessings and opportunities. 

Let us look now up towards the head of the lake. 
Our sixty-ninth position is marked not far from those 
last taken. Better find the place on the map and 
observe where the red lines reach off. 

Position 6g. On somber I^ake Olden, lying deep be- 
tween cloud-covered mountains, below Mselke- 
vold Glacier 

Direction — This time we face, as the map told us, 
almost precisely south. Surroundings — Mindresunde 
farm, where we saw the people reaping their barley 
(Position 66), is now almost directly behind us, down 
the lake. Grytereid Glacier (Position 67) is across 
the lake at our right. 

If it were not for the boatmen waiting there with 
the fir ring (four-oared boat), one might think he had 
left all human life behind. Cliffs and ice and clouds 
above — cliffs and ice and clouds below — it looks as 
if we had come to a wall at the very end of the world, 
with nothing beyond but ghosts and giants and spirits 
of the wind and storm. We should not be so far 
wrong, either, for, over beyond that horizon of glit- 
tering ice at the south, other ice fields stretch out, cov- 
ering the mountain tops and filling the valleys over 
five hundred dreary square miles. Well might the 
ancient Norsemen, living in a land Hke this, gradually 
work out for themselves big, poetic notions about 

Position 69. Map 8 



178 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

how the world began, and about the warring Powers 
that governed it. According to the old pagan 
mythology, it was out of the union of Fire and Frost 
that the giants were born, and out of the body of 
the giant Ymer the world was made by three brother- 
gods, Odin (spirit), Vile (will) and Ve (holiness). 
The giant's bones formed the rocks, his blood the 
seas, his hair the forests and his brain the floating 
clouds. The first human creatures were Ask and 
Embla, made from an ash tree and an elm. All this 
mortal life was a ceaseless struggle by man against 
the giant powers of evil, but the gods were on his 
side. 

Even here the inquisitive zeal of the modern moun- 
tain-climber has penetrated the forbidding loneli- 
ness of the heights. A few energetic Alpinists do 
occasionally climb up over that cloud-draped moun- 
tain, which we see at the east (left) of Maelkevold 
Glacier, and come down again along the eastern slope 
of the glacier itself. Slingsby in his Norway, the 
Mountain Playground, tells how he did it, himself, a 
few years ago. 

If we look upward almost anywhere on the banks of 
this lake, it is like gazing towards the top of a huge, 
enclosing wall. Try it, for example, at a point almost 
opposite here on the east shore, where the map shows 
a red 70. (And when you have the proper stereo- 
graph in place, throw your head back just a little, so 
that you see things at a slight upward angle.) 

Position 70. Rustbifos, as it seems to come out of the 
sky above Mt, RustbPs ragged heights 

Direction — West. Surroundings — The deep pocket 
of the lake drops from this bank only a few rods away 

Position 70. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 179 

behind us. The Maelkevold Glacier, towards which we 
have just been gazing, is now at our left. 

Here again we find every available foot of ground 
utilized for grain, hay or vegetables. Those little 
patches of grass higher up at the south (left) of the 
falls will be mown to add to the barn-stores for next 
winter. 

How tiny the sod-roofed cottage does look in com- 
parison with Nature's background! It is no wonder 
at all that people in old times used to believe in 
giants ; it certainly does seem as if this land had been 
l)lanned for giants' habitation, so singularly "out of 
scale'* are all human belongings. Old Norse stories 
are full of accounts of dealings between giants and 
men. One popular fairy tale begins with a peasant 
girl's meeting one of the Big People in the woods ; 
her father sent her to fetch his coat, which he had left 
there while he was chopping wood. The giant was 
going to carry her off. but she persuaded him to let 
her first carry the coat home. "To-morrow night," 
she said, "when I go to the stabbur (i. e., the outside 
storehouse) for bread, you may take me if you choose, 
but to-night let me take father's coat home, else he 
won't like it." And sure enough, the next night, when 
they sent the girl to get the bread, the giant was wait- 
ing and he seized her and carried her off to his home. 
But she had three brothers, and the brothers set out 
to rescue her; the adventures they met on their 
quest make up the rest of the story, full of realistic 
details. 

Many a child in Bergen and Christiania has read 
that story and shivered with sympathetic excitement 
over the little maid's courage in making that eerie 
bargain for time ! 



PQsitiD0 70. M^p8 



180 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

There is a highway on this side of the lake leading 
three or four miles up the valley to Brigsdal, and in 
summer one can hire a stolkjaerre for about sixty- 
seven cents (2 kroner 50 ore) ; it is an hour's drive. 
At Brigsdal (the spot is marked 71, near the south 
end of the lake), we shall be fortunate enough to see 
one of the characteristic festival costumes of this 
west-country district — the sort of thing we have read 
about in all the Norwegian stories. 

Position 71. A Nord fjord bride and groom with 
guests and parents at their house door, Brigsdal 

We do not see the whole of the party assembled 
for the wedding, though a few neighbors stand within 
range. (The man in the long coat, just beyond the 
bridegroom, is not a Norseman, but a foreign tour- 
ist). The elderly people in the doorway are the bride's 
father and mother. A great many Norwegians of 
the elder generation wear a beard of that peculiar 
cut. Ibsen himself followed the same fashion. (See 
Position 10). 

The wedding ceremony itself has been performed 
in church down at Olden, at the lower end of the lake. 
Now the bride is no longer to be addressed as Fr'oken 
(Miss), but with the more dignified title of Fru (Mrs. 
or Madame). These titles are, however, in practice, 
applied only to women of the upper classes. 

Every Norwegian country girl looks forward to 
the honor of wearing such a bridal crown; the cus- 
tom is of very ancient origin. (City girls oftener 
follow the more commonplace customs of the Con- 
tinent, from which they take their standards of 
fashion.) A wealthy farmer's family in many cases 
treasures a silver-gilt bridal crown as one of its most 



Position 71. M^p 8. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 181 

interesting heirlooms, the daughters wearing it in 
turn, and perhaps borrowing it for the grand- 
daughters when their time arrives. People in humbler 
circumstances, like these Brigsdal citizens, provide an 
imposing crown, whose outside is either gilded or 
finished in shining brass, though it has no intrinsic 
value. Sometimes a pretty girl manages to produce 
the traditional effect by means of a coronet neatly 
covered with gilt paper — the idea of a crown is the 
main thing. The tinsel-embroidered ribbons which 
hang from this crown are not invariably a part of 
the decoration, but the heavy embroidery of the bodice 
and the showy pendants worn on the breast are dear 
to girlish hearts. The costume, as a whole, omitting 
only the crown and its appurtenances, will constitute 
the young woman's holiday toilette for many seasons 
to come. 

Unfortunately for the picturesqueness of life, the 
tendency is for the men to abandon whatever was once 
distinctive in their own garb, and to adopt the very 
same commonplace cut which prevails over Europe in 
general. It is a natural result of the increasing ease of 
communication between town and country. 

Mention has already been made"^ of the custom of 
sending a formal offer of marriage by a third person 
to a girl's parents. The long engagement which often 
intervenes between the formal betrothal and the actual 
wedding is sometimes a weary waiting, but it is often 
unavoidable, so hard it is in this part of the country 
to make a place for an additional home. Not an inch 
more land is there to cultivate; the community can 
probably not support any increased number of inde- 
pendent artisans or tradesmen. If young people are 



Page 90. 



Position 71. Map 8 



182 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

not inclined and able to emigrate, they may perhaps 
be actually obliged to postpone their wedding until 
some change in the parish makes a little house vacant, 
and so gives them a chance to set up housekeeping. 
In old times, before so many energetic, enterprising 
young people went to America, the practice of waiting 
for a house was much more common than now, and 
often a sadly unfortunate thing it was for the peace 
of mind of all concerned. Miss Martineau's old- 
fashioned romance, called Feats on the Fjord, gives a 
pretty picture of a country betrothal, and of how the 
young couple waited for a certain cottage on their 
employer's large estate, before their marriage could 
actually be celebrated. 

There are curious old superstitions connected with 
Norwegian weddings. The "hill people," trolds, gob- 
lins, and the like, used to be credited with special de- 
signs against weddings. If they could possibly man- 
age it they would steal a bride and carry her off to 
live with them in realms subterranean, so that the 
human race might not increase in numbers and 
strength. Even if they did not go so far as ta break 
up a marriage altogether, goblins used to make 
mischief. Over near Eidfjord, so the story goes, a 
bad spirit once took the form of a wandering fiddler 
and attended a wedding, offering to play for the even- 
ing dance, and he wielded his fiddle-bow with such 
magic power, that the bride danced and danced and 
could not stop, but danced until she died! 

There are many descriptions of wedding festivities 
which can be read in English. See, for instance, the 
Nordhoug wedding in Synnove Solbakken, the wed- 
ding in Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and others. Bjornson, in 
The Bridal March, describes the shy wonder and ad- 



Position 71. Map S. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 183 

miration felt by a little girl guest, about the age of 
this small damsel in the kerchief. Stone's Norway 
in June gives quite detailed accounts of ceremonies 
witnessed in this country severai years ago. 

The objective point of most of the tourists who 
visit Brigsdal is a certain arm of the vast Jostedal 
Glacier, which reaches down into the valley not far 
above the few farms of the neighborhood. Our stand- 
point is numbered 72 on the map. 



Poaition 72. 'Perilous Brigsdal Glacier, one of the 
grandest in all Norway 

Direction — We are facing south-southeast. Sur- 
roundings — Lake Olden is now behind us. 

(Everybody is surprised by the first look through 
the stereoscope, which makes it evident how high we 
are standing above the bottom of the valley.) 

These two men are both Norwegian guides. The 
one with the coil of rope slung over his shoulder is 
Rasmus Aabrekke, one of the most expert mountain 
climbers in northern Europe. The other is Thor Eide, 
whom we have seen before at his home (Position 64). 

The matter of surnames is in an interesting transi- 
tional stage here in the country districts. For cen- 
turies past country people have not been in the habit 
of inheriting the same surname from generation to 
generation, as is the custom in English-speaking coun- 
tries, but have acted in accordance with a custom they 
had long ago, in common with our own Anglo-Saxon 
forbears, calling each new child by some Christian 
name (e. g., Hans, Rolf, Harald, or the like), and 
identifying him further, when necessary, by saying 



Position 72. Map 8 



184 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

whose son he was (Peders-son, Sigurds-son, etc.) 
Sometimes a family record would show a long line 
of alternating names; if Lars Sigurdsson named his 
own boy Sigurd, the lad would be called Sigurd Lars- 
son. If Sigurd in turn named his own boy Hans, 
that youth would be Hans Sigurdsson, and so on — 
a system which answered very well in a small com- 
munity, where everybody knew everybody else, and 
could take time to recall the neighbors' genealogies. 

Another method was to give a child as a surname 
the name of the farm or estate where he was born. 
The surnames of Thor Eide and Aabrekke were thus 
derived. (Look near the south end of Lake Olden 
on the map, and you will find Aabrekke set down. 
Eide is over on the west bank.) Again, a surname 
sometimes describes a person's occupation (like our 
English names Baker, Cooper, Fisher, Shoemaker, 
etc.) Occasionally they are more fanciful, being 
taken from Nature, like Ash (tree), North, Wolf, and 
the like: Bjornson means literally ''Son of a bear." 
The custom suggests that of American Indians, but 
it rarely went so far as to become fantastic or 
grotesque. 

If Norse country people go to live in a large city, 
in Christiania, for example, local traditions are, of 
course, unintelligible to their neighbors, and a sur- 
name once adopted becomes permanently fixed, just 
as it would be in Germany or England. 

Aabrekke is one of two men who enjoy the dis- 
tinction of being the only living mortals who ever 
succeeded in climbing over the Brigsdal Glacier here 
before us. The undertaking is so exceedingly difficult 
and dangerous that even seasoned Alpinists thus far 
leave it on the list of the unconquered; but there is 
no telling what may be done as time goes on. 

Position 72. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 185 

As we readily see by reference to the map, this is 
only one of several great icy arms that hang down in 
various places from the same vast glacier of which 
we have had other glimpses. It is the largest glacier 
in all Europe, covering nearly as much ground as a 
British county. The downward movement of the ice- 
sheet in a valley like this can be quite accurately 
measured by surveyors, sighting certain parts of the 
ice that are recognizable by their structure or by the 
debris they carry ; yet in many cases glacial move- 
ment is found to vary greatly in different seasons, 
even when the conditions seem nearly identical. One 
such glacier over near the Sor fjord* thirty years ago 
was pushing bodily down into the valley below at the 
rate of over one hundred feet in a season; then for 
some reason it stopped, that is to say, its annual 
waste by melting balanced whatever advance it made, 
so that the ice-covered area remained actually un- 
changed. Little wonder if, in the presence of such 
freakish changes in a big, silent monster of this sort, 
helpless little human folk came to regard the glitter- 
ing Jokiil with superstitious dread. Centuries ago 
priests were sometimes called upon to exorcise a Jokul 
and keep it back within bounds, but that is, of course, 
a thing of the past. 

Unless one has had experience in seeing glaciers, he 
is likely to have an inadequate notion of the depth of 
the ice and the width of such fissures as that mass 
shows by its nearest edge. Suppose we descend into 
the valley and go quite close to a low arched hollow 
under the edge of the ice. 



*The Buarbrae (bra means glacier). 



Position 72. Map 8 



186 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position 75. Cavernous mouth of huge Brigsdal 
glacier where ita melting ice forms mountain 
torrents* 

Direction — We are now facing pretty nearly south. 
Surroundings — The ridge on which we were standing 
with Aabrekke and Eide is behind us at the right. 

There is now before the cavern more fallen ice than 
when we saw it from across the valley. Some of those 
great fragments broke off and crashed on the ground 
while the photographer was standing here with his 
camera. Evidently that ice cavern would not be a safe 
region to explore! 

By the way, here is a chance to see the making of 
just such a moraine or bed of debris as we found 
turned into farmlands down beside the lake (Positions 
67 and 68). If the glacial action keeps on long 
enough, a big bed of its rock scrapings may accumu- 
late here and gradually become transformed into 
fertile earth. Geologists say that the very existence 
of Lake Olden itself is caused by the accumulation 
of an ancient glacial moraine at the north end of the 
valley, acting like a dam to hold the valley waters 
back from the fjord. 

In order to get some idea of what it would be like 
to cross such an ice river as this, let us watch our 
two guides clambering over part of one of the edges 
close by. 

Position 74. Among mountains and caverns of ice; 
enormous crevasses of Brigsdal Glacier 

Surroundings — We are standing on the edge of the 
ice. The valley is behind us. 

*The intense light reflected from this glittering mass of ice made it neces- 
sary to cut short the time of exposing the photographic negative, hence the 
darkness and lack of detail in the figures of the men. 

Positions 73-74. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOrE 187 

This is the way they use the rope which we first 
saw carried in a coil on the guide's slioulder. If there 
were three or four men together making an ascent of 
the glacier, they would all be fastened to one rope in 
this manner, then, if one should slip, or if ice should 
give way under him, the others could, by maintain- 
ing their own footing, pull him back to safety. Though 
the rope is not large, it is amazingly strong, being 
woven especially for such use by mountaineers. It 
is usually kept a bit slack between each two men — 
not so slack that a person could fall far, and yet not 
so taut that one person's fall would too promptly pull 
the next man along with him. The right tension is a 
matter for expert judgment. 

The ice axe is used chiefly for chopping out steps 
on surfaces where there would otherwise be no foot- 
hold. The pointed end of the axe is invaluable as 
giving a support. Thor Eide's brawny arms could 
easily drive it so far into a mass of ice that the em- 
bedded staff would serve as a substantial post. 

It was in 1895 that Aabrekke and another guide 
named Bing climbed over this glacier for the first 
time. From half-past seven one morning to half-past 
four that afternoon they were cutting their way over 
the glittering blue ice, part of the way Hke this, much 
of it immeasurably worse, with the probability — in 
case of a fall — of being dashed to pieces over a hun- 
dred-foot cliff of ice, or being frozen to death in the 
fathomless depths of some dark and treacherous 
crevasse. 

Lake Olden, beautiful as it is, has a neighbor per- 
haps more beautiful still. Turn to Map 8 once more, 
and see how Loen Lake fills another space between the 
mountains a little farther to the northeast. Our next 



Position 74. Map 8 



188 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

position is to be where the map shows a red 75, on 
the east side of the lake. 



Position 75. Mountain -walled I^oen Lake, unrival- 
led in beauty and grandeur, from Seten farm. 

Direction — We are looking now southeast, that is, 
up the lake. Surroundings — Lake Olden is now at 
our right, beyond a high wall of ice-capped mountains. 

One is continually tempted to quote Bjornson up 
here in the Nordfjord country, and, indeed, it hardly 
calls for apology. Bjornson actually is, to a great 
extent, the voice of Norway, the poet, who, better 
than all others, knows how to put the soul of his 
native land into articulate words. Do those boys 
down by the old barn know him too, we wonder? 
Do they ever gaze off like Arne to the wall of granite 
and ice, and long to fly away to the big unknown 
world beyond? 

"What shall I see if ever I go 

Over the mountains high? 
Now I can see but the peaks of snow 
Crowning the cliffs where the pine trees grow, 

Waiting and longing to rise 

Nearer the beckoning skies. 

Forth will I, forth! Oh, far, far away. 
Over the mountains high! 

I shall be smothered if here I stay; 

Courage arises to seek the way. 
Let it a flight now be taking, 
Not on this rock-wall be breaking!" 

These lake farms are, in truth, not quite so isolated 
as they used to be, for, even if the families born here 
stay here all their lives, every summer brings an in- 
flux of strangers from the outside world. This dis- 



position 75. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 189 

trict is becoming more and more popular both with 
Norwegian city folk and with foreign travelers. 

The glaciers that we see straight ahead at the south, 
and high up on either side of the lake, are parts of 
the same vast ice-sheet to which the Brigsdalsbrae 
belongs. Here around Loen Lake it not infrequently 
happens that the midsummer sun loosens great blocks 
of ice at the edges of such lofty ice-fields, and broken 
fragments come tumbling down into the lake in sud- 
den avalanches. Some years ago such an avalanche 
descended on the side of the lake where we are now, 
and only a few miles from this very spot; it tore off 
trees and earth in a ragged streak down the moun- 
tain, and, though it happened not actually to touch 
any human habitation, its swift passing (like that of 
a gigantic express train) caused such a draught that 
two little farm houses were blown off into the lake ! 

Three or four generations ago it was not uncom- 
mon to find people in an isolated region like this be- 
lieving quite firmly in the existence of supernatural 
creatures, on whose will such happenings depended. 
They had an idea that certain spirits watched over 
each farm, ready to do friendly services when in a 
good humor, or to cause all sorts of calamities if 
offended. When the mistress began to make new 
cheese, she always set a piece of the first and best 
somewhere out behind the barns, for the delectation 
of the unseen creature. In case of any family festival, 
like a christening, a betrothal or a wedding, pains 
were taken to compliment the same important person- 
age with the offering of cakes and ale. 

Highways are few in this neighborhood. The usual 
way of going to church is by boat — everybody around 
here has a boat and knows how to row. Even in win- 
ter, when the deep waters are locked fast under thick 

Position 75. Map 8 



190 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

ice, the lake still offers the most convenient route to 
the village of Loen ; in winter the use of skis makes 
traveling comparatively easy, whatever the depth of 
snow. 

By the way, there is hereabouts a curious super- 
stition connected with churches. It used to be be- 
lieved (indeed, some conservative old folk still hold 
to their own opinions in the matter) that on the day 
before Christmas, especially on Christmas Eve, spirits 
of evil hang about church buildings and other holy 
places, in a particularly bad temper, because of the 
coming anniversary of the birth of our Lord. The 
story is told that, a number of years ago, a young 
army officer, who professed not to believe in evil 
spirits at all, put on a bold front, and on Christmas 
Eve went into Loen Church, a few miles off behind 
us, to get a book kept there. Nobody now can be 
quite sure just what happened, but some awful Thing 
drove him out of the building and chased him away, 
so that he accidentally fell upon his own sword and 
died. At least, that is the way the tale is told. You 
may believe what you please. 

If we go around on the farther side of that low, 
wooded point enclosing this cove, we shall get another 
view, one of the most beautiful in this vicinity. 

Position 76. I^ake I^oen, fed by glaciers on its eloud' 
capped mountain shores 

Direction — We are looking, as before, towards the 
south. Surroundings — The farm where the people 
were out among the hayracks is now around at our 
left. 

The distant mountains are practically the same as 
we saw them before, but now we get more of the 

Fosltipo 76. Map S 



NORWAY THROUGH TriE STKRICOSCOPE 191 

effect of lonely grandeur. Nobody knows just how 
deep these waters may be, filling the narrow floor of 
the crooked valley. They are by no means always 
rnirror-still as we see them now. Breezes often blow 
suddenly down from one of those heights, setting 
these poplar leaves to quivering on their stems, and 
covering the lake with ripples, and when the breeze 
stiffens into a summer squall it would be dangerous 
sport playing with a sailboat. 

A Norwegian- American (Air. Rasmus B. Ander- 
son), who knew the famous violinist, Ole Bull, says: — 

"I once asked Ole Bull what had inspired his 
weird and original melodies. His answer was 
that from his earliest childhood he had taken the 
profoundest delight in Norway's natural scenery. 
He grew eloquent in his poetic description of the 
grand and picturesque flower-clad valleys, filled 
with soughing groves and singing birds; of the 
silver-crested mountains, from which the sum- 
mer sun never departs; of the melodious brooks, 
babbling streams and thundering rivers; of the 
blinking lakes that sing their deep thoughts to 
starlit skies. . . . He spoke with especial 
emphasis of the eagerness with which he had de- 
voured all myths, folk-tales, ballads and popular 
melodies; and 'all these things,' he said, 'have 
made my music' "* 

Shall we see how the shores look from the deck of 
the local steamer ? The red 77 marks our place. 



* From the introduction to Kristofer Janson's The Spell-hound Ftddler 
{Den Ber^kne), translated by Auber Forestier (Aubertine Woodward 
Moore). This charming Norse romance is based on the life of a Norwegian 
country fiddler, called the Miller Boy. whom Ole Bull knew and was much 
interested in. 



Position 76. Map 8 



192 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position >27, Tourists crossing rippling I^oen I^ake; 
view across to a huge glacier between the heights 

Direction — We are facing now nearly south, i. e., 
towards the upper end of the lake. 

It happens on this trip that the little steamer will 
not hold all the tourists, who have come in a large 
party to see the lake, so a number of them are being 
towed behind in the tender. These, as it happens, are 
chiefly Germans; a great many German tourists visit 
Norway in summer by the Hamburg-American ex- 
cursion boats, though English-speaking travelers are 
more numerous still. 

Sometimes on a summer Sunday, when there is to 
be preaching at Loen church, the steamer tows a 
number of rowboats from the lakeside farms. 

The one place on the west shore where there is 
room for any farms, is away up near the head of the 
lake. This steamer will carry us there. The landing- 
place is marked 78. Be sure to find it on the map. 



Position 78, Utigaardsfos leaping 2000 feet from. 
Ravnefjeld Glacier into J^oen I^ake, seen from 
Nesdal 

Direction — ^We are facing a bit north of west. Sur- 
roundings — Just at our left is some low land, filling 
a little space where the streams from a high glacier 
have washed down quantities of gravel and sand. We 
can see at our feet how the gravel reaches out into 
the lake, keeping the water here quite shallow. Not 
far away at our right, however, mountains rise as 
high as those just ahead. 

That is the steamer from whose stern we saw the 
tender full of passengers. Evidently the vessel itself 



Positions 77-78. Map 8 



XORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 193 

could not accommodate a large party. Most of the 
people were on their way to visit a famous glacier, an 
hour's walk from here up the valley. The burden 
those white-aproned girls are carrying between them 
is lunch for members of the party. Fresh fish may 
quite possibly be one of the viands, for trout are 
fairly plenty in the lake, and fishing always finds will- 
ing devotees. 

No doubt the steamer itself seems a marvel of 
convenience and mechanical skill, in the eyes of such 
country urchins as we saw over at Seten farm (Posi- 
tion 75), accustomed to compare it only with their 
own rowboat. What will be their amazement, if 
they should emigrate, by and by, at the sight of a 
great ocean-liner? There are, indeed, many marvels 
waiting for them "over the mountains high !" 

All summer long that white ribbon of a waterfall 
drops from the sagging shoulder of the mountain. Its 
source is more than a third of a mile vertically above 
the sands at our feet. At the right, over the stern 
of the boat, we can see where earth and stones have 
fallen from the almost vertical wall of Ravnefjeld. 
Quite likely that may have happened in spring, when 
the frost came out of the ground, and the thin skin 
of soil was tender from its soaking with moisture. In 
time Nature may patch up the wound and cover it with 
a new growth of grass and bushes. 

As one goes back down the lake he passes near 
where the map marks the name Hogrenning, on the 
east bank. The place is so completely typical, in its 
way, that we ought to pause oflf-shore for a look at 
it. Notice that the red lines diverging from point 
79 on our map end against a near-by mountain. 



Positions 78-79. Map 8 



194 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Position 'jg. Hogrenniug farm, nestling at the 
mountain's base, on the east shore of I^oen I^ake 

Direction — We are, of course, facing nearly east. 
Surroundings — Nesdal boat-landing is now off at our 
right. Behind us, across the narrow strip of deep 
water, rise mountains as high as any we have seen 
around the lake. 

"Deep and low the hamlets lie 
Beneath their little patch of sky 
And little lot of stars." 

Here there is not even a "hamlet," but just the 
buildings of one prosperous farm, for the stars to 
shine on through a long winter night. And it will be 
a cosy winter, too, according to local standards of 
comfort. Those laden grain-poles that look like a 
regiment of soldiers on parade, mean plenty to eat 
during the long interval when the sun turns a very 
cold shoulder on this region. Fuel can be had to 
any desired amount without thinning the tree-growth 
in such a way as to invite avalanches. The roofs are 
snug and tight. There will be plenty of hay for all 
the cows and goats. The building of a new boat, the 
making of new farm-tools or household furniture, and 
tasks of that sort, will give the men- folk sufficient em- 
ployment to keep time from hanging heavy on their 
hands. The women find plenty of occupation in 
their housework, spinning, knitting and sewing. When 
the weather does not encourage going down to Loen 
to church, they can read their Bibles and other re- 
ligious books, and feel themselves in harmony with 
the general spirit of the Sabbath. Yes, if it is the 
Simple Life one wants, he can lead it here as well 
as anywhere in the world. 



Position 79. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 195 

It was on some such estate, only in a house of logs, 
that Farmer Ironbeard must have lived — the rich yeo- 
man whose independence of king and court is chroni- 
cled in the ancient Heimskringla and retold by Long- 
fellow in the familiar story : — * . 

"Hodden gray was the garb he wore 
And by the hammer of Thor he swore; 

He hated the narrow town and all its fashions. 

But he loved the freedom of his farm, 
His ale at night by the fireside warm, 

Gudrun, his daughter, with her flaxen tresses. 

He loved his horses and his herds, 
The smell of the earth and the song of birds, 
His well-filled barns, his brook with its 
water-cresses." 

One of the most interesting land- journeys in all 
Norway is between this lake region and the head 
of the Geiranger Fjord, farther north. The best way 
to start is from a posting station at the head of Lake 
Stryn, a few miles northeast of Loen Lake. A glance 
at Map S will show just where the basin of Stryn is 
located, and our next position will be found, marked 
80, at its eastern end. 



Position 80. IfOokittg from Hjelle across quiet I^ake 
Stryn to the steeps and glaciers of Mount Skaala 

Direction — The map told us this. We are facing 
southwest, that is, towards the lower end of Loen 
Lake, though mountains intervene. Surroundings — 
A valley opens behind us, but all around stand moun- 



*The Saga of King Olaf, in Tales of a Wayside Inn. 



Positions 79.SO. Map 8 



196 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

tains, grim or green, according to whether Nature 
has had a chance to cover their granite ribs with a 
padded coat of verdure. 

Those balconies and the Httle summer-house down 
at our right are, of course, tokens that summer travel 
comes this way. The pretty girl up here on the bank 
takes advantage of the tourist season to earn a modest 
sum as waitress and chambermaid at the inn. The 
lake itself is fuldt af iisk (full of fish), so they say, 
and the scenery rivals that of its neighbor lakes in 
splendor. That superb cone over yonder, its top ap- 
parently broken off and filled with ice, is Mount 
Skaala. Over on its farther side, glacier streams run 
down into Loen Lake, not very far from where we saw 
the peasant children (Position 75). The summit is 
more than six thousand feet above this lake. 

At a station like this, one often meets an interesting 
variety of travelers — Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, 
German, French, British, American. The Scandi- 
navians who take such summer excursions are 
naturally people of means ; that quite often implies a 
fair knowledge of English and some musical skill, and 
they are exceedingly interesting acquaintances for 
the American who is fortunate enough to find himself 
in their company. 

Our map shows a highway extending from Hjelle 
back (northeastward) up the Vide valley. That road 
marks our own onward route, and our first halt is 
to be at the spot marked 81. This time we find the 
map promises a longer outlook, for some distance 
back over the valley. 



PositlOOisSO-Sl. Maps 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 197 

Position 8i, From the mountain inn at Vide Saeter 
down the Vide Valley; Mt. Skaala in right dis- 
tance 

Direction — We are looking west-southwest, towards 
Hjelle by the lake, though the lake is not in sight. 
Surroundings — Behind us rise mountains, like those 
ahead. The valley continues off behind us at the 
right. 

Until a few years ago this old house of squared 
logs was the only available shelter for travelers going 
up or down the valley, and many a tourist, hungry and 
tired, perhaps drenched by a sudden downpour of 
rain, was thankful enough for the hospitality of its* 
sod-covered roof. Since the completion of a famous 
mountain road above here (we shall see it presently), 
travel has so increased as to warrant the building of 
an inn on the hillside behind us, but the saeter itself is 
still used by the women in charge of these cows, for 
their dairy work. 

That is the highway of which we get a glimpse at 
the right of the old house. By looking sharply we can 
trace it a long way down the valley. The mountain 
which towers over the end of the valley at the right 
is Skaala, the same height which we saw across Lake 
Stryn (Position 80). Hjelle and the lake are farther 
to the left. 

No doubt the dairy girls find life up here a good 
deal more interesting now that the summer brings 
so many travelers to break up its monotony. There 
is something to see besides mountains and skies, and 
probably those really did lose some of their beauty 
through over-familiarity. There used, long ago, to 
be a certain dramatic element in the case of cows in 
a lonely place like this. Old traditions said one must 
keep the cows literally in sight every minute of the 



Position 81. Map 8 



198 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

day, lest the covetous hill-spirits should turn them into 
wee creatures, the size of mice, and drive them away 
into mysterious realms underground. But, of course, 
nobody has believed a story like that for many a long 
year. The watching done nowadays is only to guard 
against letting one of the rather awkward beasts wan- 
der off where the cliffs are too steep and so fall from 
slippery rocks. 

The customary way of calling the cows in at milk- 
ing time, is with a long, wooden horn, called a lur. 
It is not musical, like the Alpine horns, but its blare 
carries over long distances, and the cattle recognize it 
instantly. Special songs (yodels) are also used by the 
girls at milking time. 

Some sort of skin is drying on that pole behind the 
saeter, but it is difficult to identify it at this distance. 
Bears used to be common and dangerous in this 
region, but of late years they are rarely seen. Wolves 
are practically extinct in this part of the country. 
Maybe it is the skin of a reindeer ; those hardy 
creatures are quite often seen roaming wild about 
this region — seen, that is, at a distance; they are shy 
creatures, and do not willingly allow a traveler to ap- 
proach very near. 



The people who best understand the reindeer, and 
who, as a matter of fact, derive a great part of their 
living from the ownership of reindeer herds, are those 
strange aboriginal folk, the Lapps. Certain barren 
heights farther up in the interior, above this saeter, 
are favorite summer camping places for their migra- 
tory families, and there we shall find one group worth 
visiting. The location of the camp is marked 82. 



Positions 81-82. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 199 

Position 8z» A happ family and sledge^og, outside 
their summer borne 

Direction — We are facing west. Surroundings — 
Barren, open heath, Hke what we see. 

These aboriginal people are to Norwegians proper 
what the North American Indians are to the white 
people of the United States, though these have rather 
more in common with the dominant people among 
whom they live. They are shorter in stature than 
most Norwegians, and darker in complexion, belong- 
ing to the Mongol race, instead of the Teutonic. 
Many of them speak Norwegian, besides their own 
language. At least a part of the year they live near to 
some settlement, so that the children may go to a- 
country school and learn to read and write; at the 
usual age this boy and girl will pass an examination 
with little Norwegians in the church catechism and 
be confirmed. Without much doubt this substantial 
matron was formally married by some Lutheran pas- 
tor, and the children will decorously follow parental 
example when they grow up. It is, however, not 
probable that they will marry Norwegians. Though 
mixed marriages do occur every now and then, in- 
stinctive race-feeling on both sides usually draws a 
line at wedlock. 

When these children were babies they spent sev- 
eral months tied into cradles of reindeer hide on a 
wooden frame, and hung up inside or outside the tent, 
somewhat like an American Indian "papoose" in its 
own cradle of birch-bark. 

The boy and girl now are dressed so nearly alike, it 
would be difficult to guess their identity, but for the 
custom of sewing a big rosette on the crown of a 
boy's cap. It is the badge of masculine superiority. 



Position 82. Map 8 



200 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

These summer coats and frocks are of coarse blue 
woolen homespun, bought from some farmer or at a 
country store, and probably paid for with, reindeer 
meat or cured hides. The ornamental bands of trim- 
ming are red cloth. The men's caps may also have 
been bought, like the checked stuff of the mother's 
apron and shawl, but the shoes worn by the whole 
family are the traditional homemade articles, of tough 
reindeer hide, that will bear an almost limitless amount 
of tramping over rough ground and rocks. The seams 
are sewed with reindeer sinews into wonderful close- 
ness, so that they are practically waterproof. In win- 
ter a pair is worn large enough and loose enough to 
admit of packing soft, dry grass and moss around 
each foot, the best practical protection yet known 
against the intense cold of this high latitude. Nansen 
used this sort of foot-gear on his Arctic explorations. 

Do you notice that both men have knives, one stuck 
picturesquely into the belt, and the other out, ready 
for some use? A knife like that serves every sort of 
purpose you can think of — skinning a reindeer, carv- 
ing horn-spoons, cutting tobacco — it is the owner's 
most valued personal possession. Quite possibly he 
made it himself, grindinf?i .. blade into its present 
finish, and setting it in a nandlfi jof bone or reindeer- 
horn. He sells such knives f ,imes to Norwegian 
village people and to foreign tourists. 

The tent is made of coarse "burlaps" canvas, ob- 
tained by barter, like the homespun clothing stuff. 
It would seem more natural to do cooking out-of- 
doors during summer weather, but in this case, at 
least, the woman has her dinner kettle hung inside 
the tent, suspended by a chain from a cross-bar be- 
tween certain of the supporting tent poles. (The 
photographer was invited inside the tent, and kindly 

Position 82. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 201 

offered a piece of reindeer meat, which had been 
cooked in the kettle and then carved on the leaf- 
strewn floor of the tent.) The opening in the top of 
the tent does, of course, carry off smoke very well. 

This family own a considerable number of rein- 
deer, now feeding over the desolate heaths in this 
vicinity. The animals would appear to a stranger to 
be quite wild, but they have marks, on their ears or 
elsewhere, which signify definite private ownership, 
and, in some way quite mysterious to most Norweg- 
ians, the Lapp owner can succeed in catching any 
animal he wishes to milk. The quantity yielded is 
small, and the creatures are milked at longer intervals 
than domestic cattle (twice a week, perhaps), but the 
milk is exceedingly rich and nutritious, so it goes 
far as food. This woman makes cheese from it for 
winter food, somewhat as Norwegian housewives 
make theirs of cows' or goats' milk; these youngsters 
consider the thick scum which rises on boiled rein- 
deer milk the most delicious of dainties. 

As usual, boy and dog are good friends. This is 
vacation playtime for the shaggy dog, and no doubt 
he appreciates leisure. In winter he has to do his 
share of labor, drawing ^-^dge, somewhat like that 
of the Greenland Esqnimaux. Reindeer are also made 
useful as beasts of "^n. The winter season is, 
however, not sper .x re where we are now. The cold 
weather location will be probably somewhere con- 
siderably farther inland. The winter home will be 
made of stones and clayey earth, over a timber frame- 
work, and banked high with earth to keep out 
draughts. Overcoats of reindeer hide, with the hair 
inside, will keep everybody warm. Tobacco and rather 
too lavish supplies of spirits will keep them in good 
humor. The reindeer need no barns for shelter and 



Position 82. Map 8 



202 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

no store of painfully gathered hay for food, as they 
find all the moss they need by digging under the snow. 
When purchasable supplies of any sort are needed, 
there is always a market for reindeer meat or skins. 
Why should a Lapp worry, if only he owns a small 
herd of these valuable creatures? The fact is, he 
doesn't worry at all. If he is so fortunate as to own 
a couple of hundred deer, whose maintenance costs 
him nothing, he counts himself rich, and his children 
are treated respectfully when they go to town. 

We saw one herd of reindeer over on Hardanger 
Vidda, at Position 45. 

Paul Du Chaillu, the American traveler, who wrote 
The Land of the Midnight Sun, became personally 
acquainted with a number of Lapps, staying with them 
in their cabins, eating with them, and learning a great 
deal about their life, which is chronicled in his cele- 
brated book. Like the American Indians, they com- 
bine with some unsavory details in their personal 
habits and mode of life a curiously fascinating ele- 
ment of weird poetry. Though many individuals are as 
commonplace and uninteresting as can be imagined, 
the race to which they belong is popularly credited 
with all sorts of occult powers. Sorcerers and witches 
used to be found among them, and not so very many 
generations ago, for the Lapps did not generally adopt 
the Christian religion until long after that faith was 
established among the Norwegians. The Norse peo- 
ple themselves usually call them not Lapps but Finns. 
Some of the stories of Jonas Lie, the famous Nor- 
wegian novelist, have to do with the traditions of this 
ancient people. The Visionary (Den Fremsynte) is 
full of the queer atmosphere of Lapp ideas. In one 
of Lie's volumes of northern sea stories there is an 
awful tale (Flnneblod) of what happened to a Norse 

Position 82. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH T?IE STEREOSCOPK 203 

fishennaii, who thought himself too good to marry a 
Lapp sweetheart! 

It is a far cry from the spells and charms of an 
ancient race to the work of up-to*date civil engineers, 
but such are the contrasts suggested by the sights of 
our journey. Near the extreme right-hand edge of 
our map, our route turns sharply westward at a fork 
in the roads, where the inn of Grjotlid stands. Our 
next proposed standpoint we find by tracing the high- 
way approximately westward till we come to the point 
marked 83. The zigzag lines of the highway prepare 
us for seeing some unusual grade. 

Position S3. Zigzag steeps of the Grjotlid road to 
Marok 

(The grade appears not nearly as steep as it is, 
when one looks at the stereograph as he would at an 
ordinary photograph. It is only when one sees the 
place through the stereoscope that the topography is 
really understood.) 

Direction — We are facing a little east of north. 
Surroundings — Wild and barren mountain-sides. 

The pony carts on that bit of nearly level road have 
come up from Marok on Geirangerfjord, the place to 
which we ourselves are bound. No wonder the ani- 
mals, strong as they are, welcome an opportunity to 
rest without having to hold even the weight of a cart. 
Without doubt most of those passengers have walked 
up the steepest portions of the road, partly out of 
regard for the horses and partly from choice of the 
more comfortable mode of progress. We can see how 
suddenly the ground drops just beyond the part of 
the road where the carts are. The ascent of so nearly 
perpendicular a bank would be too much for even 



Positton 83. Map 8 



204 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

a Norwegian beast, unless he were a goat. The longer 
way around is really a saving in time. We are now 
less than four miles from Marok and the fjord, as the 
crow flies, but we are 3,000 feet above the tide-level; 
that means an average rise of about one foot for 
each six feet of straight distance! In order to make 
the grade practicable for horses, it has been laid out 
in these great zigzags, so that one actually travels ten 
miles instead of between three and four. The road is 
a masterly piece of engineering and the people are 
justly proud of it. The work, of course, involved 
an immense amount of labor and expense, for it was 
done with conscientious thoroughness, in such a way 
as to last, but the already large and constantly increas- 
ing volume of tourist travel which it attracts to this 
part of the kingdom can be depended on to make the 
investment profitable. These travelers whom we meet 
may have come up merely to see the road, intending to 
return to Marok. They may be going over to Lake 
Stryn, Loen and Olden, reversing our own route; or 
they may be intending to continue from that fork in 
the roads at Grjothd by another highway eastward 
into one of the long inland valleys, and after several 
days' drive make connection with the railway be- 
tween Christiania and Trondhjem. From the business 
point of view this road-building was a very important 
enterprise. 

Now go to the map once more, and follow the road 
with your eye till you see where it reaches the head 
of crooked Geirangerfjord. Our eighty-fourth posi- 
tion is to be taken before we reach the end of the 
road, but the red lines indicate that we shall be able 
to see the fjord in the distance. 



Positions 83-S4. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 205 

Position 84, Haying on a mountain shelf high above 
Marok village and mirror-clear Geiranger^ord 

Direction — We are facing now a little north of west. 
Surroundings — Behind us the crooked highway, which 
we have just seen, comes down over the mountains, 
which loom high behind and around us. 

It is a mere handful of hay that can be made here, 
but Norse thrift turns even this patch of sunny ground 
to account. If a second crop can be gathered, so much 
the better. It is considered worth the labor even if 
only three inches high. Very likely the leaves of those 
beautiful white birches may be gathered too at the 
end of the season ; goats will gladly eat them in win- 
ter-time. 

Many Norwegian farmers have an ingenious sort 
of "trolley" device for transporting hay from a field 
like this to a barn far below. A stout wire is stretched 
obliquely over the intervening void ; the cured hay is 
tied up tightly in bundles, with a loop attachment, and 
made to slide down along the cable. 

These people speak only Norwegian, but they 
courteously bid us God morn (good morning), and 
are ready to tell us what they can about this superb 
prospect before us. Those buildings down below are 
part of Marok village, but there are several more 
houses at the right and at the left, which we do not 
see at this moment. That low spire marks the village 
church. Those glassy waters are a part of the salt 
sea, and so deep that large ocean-liners can come in 
to anchor near the shore, but it is fully sixty miles 
from here out to the coast islands, the whole way just 
a crooked, narrow inlet, walled with mountains. 

There are places along this fjord, between here and 
open sea, where tall cliffs drop from a tiny hayfield, 
like this, straight down to the salt water, and toddling 

Posit lom 8^. Map 8 



206 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

children have to be tied securely to some convenient 
tree, in order to give them a chance to grow up. Such 
homes as theirs are off the traveled highway altogether, 
and can be reached from the fjord only by rough 
foot-paths, almost as steep as a ladder. 

The broken peak straight ahead, with a glacier 
gleaming on its summit, is Mount Torvloisa. 

Between us and the fjord, a little to the left of the 
farmer, do you see a cliff projecting into the val- 
ley, like a partly open gate? A man is standing on 
it, his own figure silhouetted against the waters of 
the fjord. Remember that rock, for we shall see it 
again (Position 87) from the fjord, as we look back 
up to where we are now. 

But we are still a considerable distance from Marok 
by the road, for the last downward drop of the 
mountain is so steep that again the path has had to 
be constructed in long detours to this side and that. 
As we proceed our route comes to an inn built on 
another bluff, overlooking the valley, and we take 
our eighty-fifth standpoint in front of a hotel, where 
some country girls are lingering after their errand 
with the housekeeper. 

Position 8S' Zigzags of the f among Gijotlid road; 
mountain milkmaids on the way near Marok 

Direction — We are looking northeast. Surround- 
ings — The village and the fjord are 1,000 feet below, 
off at our left. The hotel is behind us. 

It almost takes one's breath away to come suddenly 
to the dizzy edge of this high shelf! It really seems 
as if there ought to be some railing, some protecting 
enclosure, besides these ragged guard stones, though 
their universal use along dangerous places dges make 

PMnTon».«4-.85. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 207 

the very sight of them a reminder to be cautious. 
They border the outer edge of the road all the way 
down as far as we can follow it with our eyes. That 
is the way one has to go to reach the village and the 
steamboat wharf down at our left. A direct descent 
from this cliff where we are now would be impossible 
for any horse. We shall presently be able to look 
back up here from the fjord, and see where we have 
been. We shall at the same time see more plainly 
that waterfall of which we now get just a glimpse 
over at the other side of the valley. 

These girls have come from a sseter higher up on 
the mountain, to bring supplies for the hotel dining- 
room. The burden with which they started must 
have been pretty heavy, but the route was downward, 
not up, and they are used to hard work, and take it 
uncomplainingly. Very likely the butter and cheese 
served at Hotel Udsigt (Outlook House) may come 
in part from their dairy; all Norwegian hotels serve 
cheese of various sorts. 

Norwegian girls and women have been studied and 
pictured many times by authors of their own national- 
ity, and the reader of novels and dramas has a chance 
to become well acquainted with a variety of feminine 
types, more or less admirable and lovable, as the case 
may be. Certainly the most celebrated Norse littera- 
teurs cannot be accused of sentimentally glossing over 
the faults and failings of their countrywomen, but 
they have given to the world some heroines of wonder- 
fully impressive dignity and sweetness and strength. 
Bjornson's Synnbve Solbakken is an idyllic picture of 
a rough, uncouth lad's love, and how a shy, flaxen- 
haired girl made a man of him. Lie's The Pilot and 
His Wife is an admirably fine study of how the de- 
voted slave of a jealous, moody husband learned to 

Position 85. Map t 



208 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

make him take a saner, more high-minded view of 
life, by herself standing simply and frankly on the 
ground of dignified truth-telling. Ibsen's An Enemy 
of the People makes the daughter of the heroic and 
much vilified doctor understand her father, when 
almost everybody else is blinded by selfish stupidity, 
and, when the play ends, though his fight is not won, 
we know she is going to stand by him, fighting at his 
side. 

We are to take our next position down on the fjord. 
Map 8 marks the spot. Be sure to look for the num- 
ber 86 and make a mental note of how the red lines 
reach up landward. 



Position 86. Marok and the giant heights behind it, 
from Geiranger fjord 

Direction — We are facing a little east of south 
from the deck of a Hamburg-American steamer. 
Surroundings — The fjord reaches off behind us. 
Mount Torvloisa, that we saw when we were up with 
the haymakers, is behind us and off at our left. 

Is it any wonder that Norsemen so heartily sing : — 
"Yes, we love our native land 
Rising from the foam, 
Rugged, rocky, weather-beaten. 
Land of many a home."* 

It would be a poor sort of soul that could not feel 
a thrill of sympathetic pride in such majestic beauty. 
The village seems to nestle confidingly at the foot of 
the mountain, as if that titanic peak of the Saathorn, 



♦Bjomson's national hymn. 



Positions 85-86. Map 8 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 20>9 

reaching more than a mile straight up towards heaven, 
were a giant guardian. 

The landing pier is a little too far to the left for us 
to see at this moment. A road begins there, runs 
past those boat houses, and makes a sweep to the right 
around the church ; you remember we saw that church 
when we were up above the village with the hay- 
makers (Position 84). And do you also remember 
that we took particular notice of a certain cliff that 
then stood out between us and the fjord, like a half- 
open gate? We can see from here that same pro- 
jecting cliff. Look beyond the church, toward the 
right, and find a building with a low tower set at 
the end of its slanting roof. Now look almost directly 
above that tower — there is our *'gate." The hay- 
makers were farther back, in a part of the valley 
which is now too much in shadow to be identified. 

But to return and trace the main highway from 
the church. We can see the gleam of its stone-work 
in zigzags beyond the church; then it turns to the 
left; its line can be traced for some distance to the 
left of the church spire along the base of that 
precipitous height just beyond, then it disappears 
from view not far from where we catch the white 
sparkle of a waterfall. From that point we cannot 
see it plainly, but it does zigzag sharply up the moun- 
tain alongside the waterfall. The hotel before which 
we stood with the milkmaids can be made out as a 
light-colored spot on the side of the mountain, almost 
directly above the church-spire, and two-thirds of the 
way up to the edge of that triangular patch of forest. 
When we stood there we were looking across a hollow 
in the side of the mountain and towards the water- 
fall. The hotel is a thousand feet higher than the 
fjord on which our vessel lies, and, though its rocky 

Position 86. Map 8 



210 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

perch is really so close above the town, it takes three 
miles' travel to get there from the boat landing. 

Several recent books of travel, e. g., Putnam's Nor- 
wegian Ramble and Goodman's Best Tour in Norway, 
tell about coming here to Marok and climbing up that 
road either to Hotel Udsigt or all the way which we 
have just traced between here and the lakes. It adds 
enormously to the pleasure of reading such books 
when we have seen the place for ourselves. 

If we were to continue our journey on this steamer 
down the fjord from Marok, we should reach a fringe 
of islands along the outer coast. Consult Map 2 once 
more, trace the fjord for yourself, and see how extra- 
ordinarily crooked the waterway is. Some of the 
islands at the mouth of the fjord are uninhabited; 
some support a few farmers and fishermen. Two little 
islands, lying close together near latitude 62° 30', have 
been built up, forming the prosperous little town of 
Aalesund. We are to call there and get a glimpse of 
a side of Norwegian life quite different from any we 
have yet seen. First, we will get an idea of the town 
as a whole. It was nearly destroyed by fire a few 
years ago, but the damage is now repaired and from 
our eighty-seventh position we shall see things look- 
ing nearly as prosperous as ever. 



Position 8y, Restoring a burned city, Aalesund, an 
island port and important £sb market 

Direction — We are facing west, toward the open 
North Atlantic. Surroundings — The island on which 
we stand extends off eastward behind us, connecting 
by a bridge with another island, and thence to the 
mainland, twenty miles farther back. For a long dis- 
position 87. Map 2 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 211 

tance at our right islands large and small are scattered 
thick along irregular shores. 

(We are seeing the place just now on a rainy day, 
when mist veils the distance. It is a pity, but, in 
truth, it does rain here an incredible number of days 
in a year, so really the present aspect of the place 
may be considered characteristic in its own way.) 

This pretty little park directly below is a public 
pleasure ground, a favorite resort of the townspeople 
in midsummer, when, on a clear day, the sun does not 
go out of sight in the northwest until nearly 10 P. 
M., and the twilight glow has not time to fade out 
of the sky before the sun appears again in the north- 
east, somewhere about 2 A. M. 

That channel or sund (sound) between the two 
island districts of the town is the Aale-sund, for which 
the place is named. It is crossed by a bridge just out 
of sight at our left. With a long arm of this island — 
Norvo (o means island) — reaching around the harbor 
at one side, and that long pier built out from Aspo 
at the other side, the sound makes an excellent haven 
in which a large fleet of fishing boats can simul- 
taneously take shelter. 

Enormous quantities of cod, herring and cod-liver 
oil are brought in here every season from famous 
fishing banks among the Lofoten islands, farther 
north, and re-shipped to other European ports, a good 
deal going to southern Europe by way of the Mediter- 
ranean. Several lines of passenger steamers call here, 
too, and the little port is one of the busiest in north- 
ern Norway. 

The town has been in existence as a town and a 
trade center only about sixty years ; indeed, there could 
not have been any Norwegian fish dealers here in 
very old times, for the great German Trust, of which 

Position 87. Map 2 



212 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

we saw reminders down in Bergen (Position 51), 
would have crushed promptly any attempt at such an 
enterprise. However, that deep, sheltered channel 
was used over a thousand years ago by Viking ships 
belonging to a few land-owners in this vicinity. Less 
than three miles away, behind us at the left, on this 
very island, there is said to have lived in the ninth 
century an adventurous sailor and soldier, and the 
consequences of his voyage out into the Atlantic, be- 
yond that promontory we see now, have been making 
European history ever since.* In all probability Rolf's 
piratical cruise around northern Europe to the French 
coast was made with vessels very like the one we 
saw in the museum at Christiania (Position 7). Those 
were rough old times among leaders of men. 

". . . The good old rule 

Sufficed them, the simple plan 
That they should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 

If we were to believe an enthusiastic writer like 
the late Paul Du Chaillu, who was in love with every- 
thing Norse, the qualities to which England so largely 
owes her dominant place to-day among the nations — ^lier 
taste for seafaring, her energy, courage, love of con- 
quest, her administrative ability in colonial affairs, 
her sturdy common-sense in matters of self-govern- 
ment, are parts of her inheritance from the Norman 
descendants of old Rolf and his men, together with 
the influence of the Vikings that settled in England. 

Nothing of the old Sea King remains now on this 
island. The present atmosphere of Aalesund is frankly 



*See page 242: "What Norway has done for the' WcftW.' 



PoshloitSTk Map 2 



NOR\VA^• THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 213 

modern and fishy. Let us go down into the town and 
watch work going on in one of the big warehouses, 
while a cargo is being unloaded from a vessel along- 
side. 

Position 88> Receiving £sb from sea-vessels and 
packing for export, in a warehouse at Aalesund 

Surroundings — The boat bringing in this load of 
fish lies at the quay beyond those doors at our left. 

The boats' crews, of course, include no women, but 
here on shore women do a large share of all the 
heavy work connected with the fish business. Two. 
million dollars' worth of cod and hake are brought in 
here every year ; the special season among the western 
islands is from January to the middle of April, though 
the season is later as boats go farther north in the 
Arctic waters. 

The fish that are being handled here just now are 
* lange," much like the American hake. There is a 
considerable market for fresh fish here in town, where 
over 8,000 people have their homes, but the larger 
part of the exported fish is cured by salting and 
drying. 

Nearly five per cent, of all the people in the king- 
dom earn their bread by fishing, or by working over 
the fish, as these men and women are doing now. 
It is a hard life, and, for those actually on the sea, 
a life full of peril. We shall before long (Positions 
93 and 94) visit one of the island stations, far up 
within the Arctic Circle, near where these very fish 
we see now were caught. 

Almost every tourist who calls at Aalesund is 
bound for a certain famous peak and river valley at 
the head of Molde Fjord. That fjord, as we see by 

Position 88. Map 2 



214 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

referring to the upper part of the map of southern 
Norway (Map 2), opens from the sea a little way 
north of latitude 62° 30'. Trace it eastward up into 
the country, and near its head we find the Rauma 
river flowing in from the southeast. We cannot afford 
to miss the Romsdal, even though the splendors of 
the Arctic seas wait for us farther on. Our next 
standpoint is marked 89, beside the river, and the 
red lines indicate a view cut off before reaching any 
great distance. This is what we see. 

Position 8g, The sharp pinnacles of the Romsdals- 
horn crowning the mountain wall above Ranma 
river 

Direction — We are facing up-river, a little east of 
south. Surroundings — Behind us lie two or three 
comfortable farms. 

It is, in its own way, one of the most splendid peaks 
in Europe, one majestic mass of primeval gneiss, the 
original stuff of the globe, just as it solidified by cool- 
ing, only broken by the twisting and wrenching it has 
undergone during ancient upheavals of the earth's 
surface, weathered by the storms of countless cen- 
turies, and draped with that scanty cloak of green. 
That topmost spire reaches about 5,000 feet above 
the floor of the valley. It is locally known as Hornet, 
i. e., "the Horn." 

One would be tempted to declare the ascent of such 
an obelisk impossible, but the thing has been done. 
The first successful attempt was that of two Nor- 
wegians, Kristen Smed and Hans Bjsermeland, in 
1832; for several years the story of their adventure 
and two days' stay near the summit was generally 
doubted, but a later ascent proved its truth, by the 
discovery of certain records of their presence made 

Position 89. Map 2 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 215 

at that time. Slingsby's Norway, the Mountain Play- 
ground, tells all about it, and gives an interesting ac- 
count of how the author himself made the difficult 
ascent in 1884. 

The valley down here under the mountain is a lit- 
tle Paradise of fertile fields and bowery groves. The 
farmers here find it possible to raise not merely grain 
and potatoes, but also apples, cherries and plums, cur- 
rants, gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries, almost 
all kinds of small fruit. The land is, of course, very 
valuable. 

A large part of Bjornson^s childhood was spent 
lower down in this same valley, near the fjord. He 
was early famiHar with all this region. One of his 
biographers remarks of the influence of environment 
upon his mental development: — 

'*'He had felt the power of the mountains over 
his mind, and been filled with longing. During 
the tedious schooldays'*' his beautiful Romsdal 
Valley lay waiting for him, beckoning him home 
at every vacation, always alluring and radiant." 

The lovely green valley has still older associations 
than those relating to the boyhood of Norway's 
favorite poet, for here, they say, ten and eleven cen- 
turies ago, lived some of the rich Norsemen who en- 
tailed their property and sent the younger sons away 
to seek fortunes over-seas.* Some of the comrades 
of Rolf himself may, very likely, have been bom in 
sight of that very mountain which we find to-day a 
glorious landmark against the sky. So, at all events, 
thought Froude, the British historian, and he wrote 



*At Molde. *See page 246. 



Posltton 89. Map 2 



216 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

some verses about it which are worth repeating here 
on the very ground. 

"So, this, then, was the Rovers' nest. 

And here the chiefs were bred, 
Who broke the drowsy Saxon's rest 
And scared him in his bed. 

The north wind blew, the ship sped fast, 

Loud cheered the corsair crew, 
And wild and free above the mast 

The Raven standard flew. 

Sail south — sail south; there Ues the land 
Where the yellow corn is growing; 

The spoil is for the warrior's hand. 
The serf may have the sowing. 

Let cowards make their parchment laws 
To guard their treasured hoards; 

The steel shall plead the Rovers' cause, 
Their title-deeds their swords. 

The raven still o'er Romsdal's peak 

Is soaring as of yore. 
But Vikings' call in cove or creek 

Calm Romsdal hears no more."* 

Before we make our own farewell to the valley, 
we should go just a little farther up-river to a post- 
ing station at Horgheim. One might, indeed, continue 
the journey by post-road over into the Gudbrandsdal, 
and thence back through eastern Norway to Christ- 
iania, but we will do like most other tourists, and 
limit our Romsdal excursion to the view from Horg- 
heim. The place where we shall stand is marked 
90 on Map 2. 



*From an essay on Norway Fjords. 



Positions 89-90. Map 2 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 217 

Position go. Ragged range of the Troldtinder or 
Witch Pinnacles, from the valley road 

Direction — We are facing now northwest, that 
is, back down the valley. Surroundings — The post- 
ing station is behind us, and beyond it the valley 
widens around a low, marshy floor. The Romsdalshorn 
is now at our right. 

A considerable number of travelers seem to be mak- 
ing the same excursion to-day, and horses and drivers 
are waiting for the return trip after luncheon. 

There are Witch Peaks innumerable in various 
places in Norway — the name is a favorite one for ap- 
plication to almost any ragged height that has any 
suggestion of the sinister about it — but these are the 
Witch Peaks, everywhere acknowledged as having 
the best title to the name. That long, jagged wall of 
archaic rock is actually higher than the Romsdalshorn. 
People say that, after sundown, when those pinnacles 
stand out against the strange, pale glow of the west- 
ern evening sky, or, above all, in winter, when their 
uncanny silhouettes have for a background the weird 
red flicker and gleam of the aurora horealis, there is 
something positively unearthly in their threatening 
beauty. 

The post-boys tell one a fantastic tale about how 
a wedding procession was going down this road one 
day, long ago — the fiddler, the priest, the bride and 
groom, and all the guests — when, for some reason, 
they were all turned to giant shapes of stone. If you 
are skeptical, they help your imagination by pointing 
out the resemblance of specific peaks to the different 
members of the Brudefolge (bridal train). 

The mountaineering book by Slingsby, already re- 
ferred to, gives an account of the author's difficult 
ascent of the Troldtinder several years ago. Others 

Position 90. Map 2 



218 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

have done the same thing since, but the number of 
expert Alpinists who attempt it is small in proportion 
to those who merely ride up the valley in pony carts, 
to gaze at the beckoning summits from this safe and 
commonplace roadway. 

That gate yonder serves to keep within bounds cat- 
tle of some sort pastured near by. Similar gates are 
common on country roads all through this part of 
Norway, and during the tourist season flaxen-haired 
children are pretty sure to be near by, ready to run 
and open the gates, in hope of some trifle 
of smaapenge (small change, i. e., copper coins) from 
the travelers. 

Map 2 should now be consulted again, in order to 
recall the exact situation of Trondhjem, on a deep 
fjord of the same name, in latitude 63° 30'. It is 
farther north than any place we have yet seen in 
Norway. The red 91 marks the spot where we are 
to stand as we overlook the historic town. 

Position gi. Trondbjem, its homes, warebonses and 
catbedralf between tbe river Nid and the fjord 

Direction — We are looking northeast, that is, in- 
land, towards the head of the fjord. Surroundings — 
Behind us rises a high hill, where several wealthy 
Norwegians have summer-villas. 

There is an old Norse song with the refrain 

"It is so pleasant in Trondhjem to dwell," 
and, indeed, it is an attractive place, with all those 
embowering trees, the winding river and the rich 
green fields of the suburbs. The specially close 
proximity of warm ocean currents makes the climate 
here surprisingly mild and pleasant; the river here 
rarely freezes, even in midwinter; the fjord is open 

Position 91. Map 2 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 219 

all the year round. The summer climate is like that 
of southern England, the winter about like that at 
Dresden, though we are five hundred miles nearer 
the Pole; market gardeners hereabouts raise a great 
variety of excellent vegetables and fruits. 

Do you notice that there is a railway track skirt- 
ing the river-bank on this side? That is one of the 
very few lines in the whole kingdom, and the most 
important of all, for it extends through the Osterdal 
to Christiania, following up this river Nid to near its 
source, then crossing over to near the head-waters of 
the Glommen river, and so finding a route compara- 
tively easy for so mountainous a country.* A train 
bound for Christiania would move from our left to- 
wards our right. The whole distance is three hun- 
dred and fifty miles, and the journey takes eighteen 
hours in an express train. The railway station is 
over at the farther (north) side of the town, near the 
harbor. From there trains also depart for Stockholm, 
five hundred and thirty miles away, over tracks lead- 
ing eastward beyond the town. 

Several lines of steamers come here. The town has 
large mills and factories of various sorts, the trade 
in fish and furs is of considerable importance, and 
there are a good many wealthy old families. 

The river at this nearest point is flowing toward 
the left ; it bends around beyond those large buildings 
on the point, and appears again flowing toward the 
right, turning a second time beyond the cathedral, and 
making its way to the fjord. The town itself was 
called in old times Nidaros, that is, "mouth of the 
Nid ;" as such it is mentioned in the Sagas. The name 
was changed to Trondhjem in the sixteenth century. 



•See chapter on Transportation, page 301 



Position 91. Map 2 



220 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The governor's palace, used as a royal residence 
when Their Majesties, King Haakon and Queen 
Maud, were crowned here (1906), is not clearly dis- 
tinguishable just now, but it is in the middle of the 
town, about half way between that tall cathedral spire 
and the harbor-front. 

The coming of the sovereign up here to Trondhjem 
for coronation is in accordance with the very ancient 
national usage. King Olaf Tryggvason, whose story 
is one of the most romantic in mediaeval history, 
founded a Christian church here, and built a royal 
palace. He was the Olaf of whom the Heimskringla 
Saga tells, the hero of Longfellow's "Saga of King 
Olaf" in the Tales of a Wayside Inn. He was rescued 
from slavery in a foreign land, came home here to 
claim his birthright, wrested the kingdom from 
usurpers, and overthrew the ancient pagan faith, or 
at least dealt it terrific blows ready for the finish by 
another Olaf (Saint Olaf) a few years later. That 
cathedral, which towers so conspicuously over the 
neighboring buildings, has seen the coronation of a 
long line of Norway's sovereigns. When the national 
constitution was adopted in 1814, one of its pro- 
visions was that rulers of Norway thereafter should 
always be crowned at Trondhjem, or "Drontheim," as 
Longfellow calls it. 

Out by that dark headland Olaf's ships must have 
passed on their way up to Salten fjord, to carry to 
pagan Raud the sovereign's emphatic, if not in- 
gratiating, demand that he embrace Christianity: — 

". . . O Sea King, 

Little time have we for speaking; 
Choose between the good and evil; 
Be baptized, or thou shalt die." 

It was a vigorous method of presenting the Gospel ! 

Position 91. Map 2 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 221 

Out past that same headland must have swept the 
splendid array of Olaf's fighting ships, when he set 
out on his ill-starred expedition to the Baltic. On his 
return he became separated from the main body of 
his fleet, and was attacked by the combined fleets of 
Olaf of Sweden, Svend Forked-beard of Denmark, 
and Earl Erik of Norway. Olaf fought bravely on 
his famous ship, the Long Serpent, but rather than be 
killed or captured he sprang overboard and was 
drowned. This combat is known in Scandinavian his- 
tory as the battle of Svolder,-^' and was fought in 
September, 1000. 

It is interesting to note that it was in Nidaros that 
Olaf Tryggvason met Leif Erikson from Greenland, 
converted him to Christianity, and, before departing 
for the Baltic, sent him to Greenland to introduce 
Christianity in the Norse colony there. It was on this 
long voyage to Greenland that Leif was drifted out 
of his course, and came to an unknown land, which 
he called Vinland, on account of the grape-vines that 
grew there. It is absolutely certain that Vinland was 
a part of the American continent. An old Norse 
Saga,t called "The Saga of Erik the Red," gives a 
detailed account of this first discovery of America. 

Shall we go down nearer the cathedral? The main 
business streets of the town are less interesting than 
one might suppose they would be, for the place has 
been repeatedly ravaged by fire, and among the new 
buildings practically nothing now remains of the 
mediaeval civic and domestic architecture. The 
cathedral itself has, however, recently been restored, 

*For an interesting account of it, see Boyesen's Story of Norway. 
See also Longfellow's 'Saga of King Olaf. 
tFor a translation of it, see T}ie NortJtmen, Columbus and Cabot 



Posltioo 91. Mdp Z 



222 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

largely according to the design of its older archi- 
tects. We shall go down to a point in the church- 
yard at the farther side of the building, so that the 
octagonal apse, which we now see at the right of the 
spire, will be at the left. 



Position g2, Trondbjem. Cathedral, whose traditions 
reach back eight centuries, the grandest church in 
Scandinavia 

Direction — We are facing nearly southwest. Sur- 
roundings — The hill from which we overlooked the 
town is nearly a mile away, beyond the trees and 
shrubbery at the left of the apse. The greater part 
of the town is at our right, with the harbor beyond it. 

This certainly is a magnificent church. The 
patriotic and devout enthusiasm that accomplished its 
restoration have good grounds for satisfaction now. 
The building material is a bluish soapstone, from 
quarries near the town, and marble, from an island 
above, off the west coast, in striking contrast to the 
timber churches common in the small towns. 

It was in the latter half of the eleventh century that 
King Olaf Kyrre began the present church, as a 
shrine to hold the relics of Saint Olaf. That south 
transept (seen at the right of the tower), and the 
Chapter House at this side, are restorations of parts 
that the church authorities built late in the twelfth 
century. The choir (extending towards us eastward 
from the tower), and that beautiful apse at its eastern 
end, are restorations of portions built about seven 
hundred years ago, at a time when European towns 
were vieing with each other in the magnificence of 
their church edifices. The nave at the farther side of 
the tower, which we do not see from here, was of 



Position 92. Mao 2 



XORWAV THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 223 

Still later construction, about the middle of the four- 
teenth century. The church is altogether over two 
hundred feet long. 

The relics of Saint Olaf used to be treasured in the 
apse, and for centuries the shrine was famous all over 
Europe for its miracles. The sick and the sorrowing 
flocked here; the devout came in throngs, and the 
curious and the thrifty followed after, as they always 
do to any such place. The result was that Trondhjem 
town, or Nidar-os, as it was then called, became 
populous and rich, too, through the generous ex- 
penditure of money by wealthy visitors. Tradition 
says the place grew until there were fourteen other 
churches besides this, and five flourishing monasteries, 
the latter being maintained largely as inns for pilgrims. 
But, strangely enough, all that order of things came 
to an end, after a series of heavy disasters. In 1328 
there was a great fire, which destroyed most of the 
choir. In 1432 the church was struck by lightning. 
In 1531 another fire reduced part of the church and 
most of the town to ruins. The State adoption of 
Protestantism in 1537 put an end to the public venera- 
tion of Saint Olaf's relics, and consequently to the 
pilgrimages, which had been of great commercial 
benefit to the town. The silver reliquary of the royal 
saint was carried off to Copenhagen, and nobody now 
knows just what finally became of the bones that were 
said to have worked so many marvels of healing. 
During part of the eighteenth century political as- 
semblies were held in that south transept. The other 
churches and the monasteries, sharing the fate of 
secular structures in various widespread conflagra- 
tions, were not rebuilt under the new ecclesiastical dis- 
pensation. One hundred years ago the town itself had 
dwindled to less than 8,000 population. 

Position 92. Map 2 



224 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The new prosperity of Troiidhjem has an entirely 
different basis, being industrial and commercial. The 
thirty-five thousand people who live here are well-to- 
do property owners, or thrifty wage-earners, and they 
have contributed generously toward the restoration of 
the stately and splendid old house of worship, though 
financial responsibility for the undertaking was shared 
by the whole country. The work of restoration was 
begun in 1868, and has been prosecuted continuously 
since 1872. When the west nave is completed, this 
venerable monument will appear in the antique 
splendor which marked its completion in about 1300. 

Worship here is, of course, according to the 
Lutheran faith and ritual."^ The altar before which 
King Haakon and Queen Maud knelt during the 
solemn service of coronation (June, 1906), is beneath 
the low octagonal tower at this end of the cathedral. 

This churchyard is a favorite resort of the towns- 
people on summer Saturday afternoons, when they 
come to put flowers on the graves, and on Sundays 
after morning service. 

During the rest of our journey, we shall use map 
1, which shows the entire kingdom, though on a 
smaller scale. Let us turn to that map now and re- 
fresh our memory of the long reach of the coast from 
Trondhjem up to the North Cape, as compared with 
the distance from Trondhjem down to Christiania. 

When we were at Bergen, and again at Aalesund, 
we saw many reminders of the great fish industries. 
We are now to see one of the island ports from 
which the fishermen go out. Away up within the 
Arctic circle, in latitude a little beyond 68°, a long, 

♦Seepage 298 for notes in regard to the ecclesiastical system which prevails 
in Norway. 

Position 92. Map 2 



NORWAY- THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 225 

irregular cluster of submerged mountains forms an 
island chain, known as the Lofotens. There are sev- 
eral fishing stations on those islands, where steamers 
call, and one of the most important is where we see 
the figures 93 and 94, enclosed in a red circle. 

Position gs, I^anding from a steamer in the Arctic 
country, Svolvser 

Direction — We are facing approximately north. 
Surroundings — All about us are islands large and 
small. 

It is an odd fashion the rowers here have of facing 
each other. The rowlocks, too, seem to be different 
from those used down on the fjords farther south. 
We do not see the whole of the village yonder — there 
is considerably more of it straggling along the shore. 
It is midsummer, and the fishing season in these 
waters is all over. That was from the middle of 
January to the middle of April. Many of the boats 
have now gone much farther north, to the banks of 
Finmarken, following the cod in their annual migra- 
tion from deep Atlantic waters to favorite spawning 
grounds, and so lengthening the time of work and 
profits. The cod are taken in various ways, with nets, 
long lines and short lines ; often the fish come in such 
dense shoals that a man with a hand line can take 
them as fast as he can bait and remove from the hook. 
Artificial minnows are largely used for the bait. A 
single boat often brings in a catch of six thousand, 
and in a first-rate season, from eight to nine thousand 
boats frequent the island "banks," taking altogether 
between thirty and forty million fish. 

While the season is at its height, there is a great 
deal of work to do on shore in and around those fish- 



Posltion 93. Map 1 



226 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

houses at the water's edge. Most of the fish are salted 
and dried, some being spHt open when cleaned, and 
spread out like a book opened flat {klipUsk), and some 
cleaned and salted with no more opening than is 
necessary to remove perishable interior parts {rund- 
iisk or stokUsk). Those taken at the end of the sea- 
son are usually split open, and have the backbone 
taken out (rotskjcer). The fish are dried in the sun 
on the rocks or on drying racks. 

Some of the fish-heads are cooked with seaweed and 
made into fodder for cattle. It seems strange that 
cattle should like it, but fortunately they do. Vast 
quantities of other fish-refuse are made into fertilizers, 
and shipped to Continental markets. 

All this requires large numbers of men, but only 
for a few months in the year, when temporary huts 
are built for those who come from hamlets and scat- 
tered farms all along the fjords of the mainland. 
Taking the kingdom as a whole, one person out of 
every twenty depends on these or similar fisheries for 
a livelihood. 

Just now the place is quiet enough, save when a 
vessel comes to take on a cargo of fish for the dis- 
tant markets. 

Sixty miles east of here, across an island-dotted 
reach of the sea, is the end of the most northerly rail- 
Avay in the world, Victoriahavn, leading to Stockholm, 
and so connecting with the Baltic ports of Europe. A 
good deal of fish goes over there for export trade. 

There are a few families living here all the year 
round, and it is not a bad place to live. Shall we land 
and get a more definite notion of what such an Arctic 
fishing town is like? 



Position 93. Map 1. 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 227 

Position g4. Picturesque Svolvser, a far north Ash- 
ing station in the Itofoten Islands 

Tourists and cameras are not very common here. 
The boys are ahnost as much interested in us as we 
are in them, though the younger one has his doubts of 
our friendly disposition."^ Even away up here within 
the Arctic Circle, Norway maintains elementary pub- 
lic schools, and boys can grow up with a fair educa- 
tional equipment, at least enough to serve in practical, 
everyday affairs, and, living in a place like this, they 
naturally absorb quantities of miscellaneous informa- 
tion about wind and weather, and all sorts of sea 
creatures, and about the far-off towns to which rela- 
tives and neighbors have made voyages. 

Edmund Gosse, the English critic, wrote in his 
Northern Studies (1879) of a visit to Svolvser: — 

"It is a fact not over-flattering to our boasted 
civilization that the education of children in the 
hamlets of this remote cluster of islands in the 
Polar Sea is higher than that of towns within a 
small distance of our capital city, ay, higher even, 
proportionally, than that of London itself." 

You see the children themselves are dressed just 
as they might be away down in Bergen, or even in 
Christiania or Stockholm. There is a church at 
another village on this same island, where they will 
pass their examination in the catechism and be 
confirmed in due time, just Hke any other little 
Scandinavians. 

Those sailboats belonging to the fishermen are 
jcegter, much like the ones we saw in Bergen harbor 
(Position 50), staunchly built, but easily capsized in 
a heavy gale. Some of them are actually built with 



♦His mother stood close bv, behind the photographer, telling the youngster 
not to be afraid. 

Positron 94. Map 1 



228 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

attachments to the keel, which can be used as handles 
by the crew, in case they are thrown overboard and 
find the hull upside down when they need to cling 
to it. Though the old tradition of an almost super- 
natural '"Maelstrom" near here has been proven to 
be only a poetic exaggeration of strong, swirling cur- 
rents, there are still plenty of genuine and awful perils 
to be met. In 1845 five hundred fishermen were 
drowned in a single hurricane which swept over these 
islands. 

Those three-story buildings and many of the smaller 
structures close to the water are fish warehouses. The 
neat white cottages tell of thrift and cosy home-mak- 
ing. There is not a great deal of cultivable land near 
by, but such as there is suffices for little gardens of 
barley and potatoes. Norwegians are sure to include 
coffee among their household supplies; goats pick up 
a living by agile industry on the rocky hills, and, of 
course, fish itself is an omnipresent food. 

A good deal of driftwood is available for fires, and 
a fortunate thing that is for Svolvaer cooks, for, of 
course, there can be no considerable tree growth so 
far north, as we are now, 68° 20'. Some of the wood, 
brought by currents from warmer climes, has come 
immense distances. Bayard Taylor, when he voyaged 
through this region, was struck by the poetic signifi- 
cance of it. "Think," he said, "of Arctic fishers burn- 
ing upon their hearths the palms of Hayti, the ma- 
hogany of Honduras and the precious woods of the 
Amazon and the Orinoco!" 

The summer weather here is much like that of 
northern Scotland, with shorter "white nights." If 
it were not for such mountains as those behind the 
village, shutting off the view at sea-level, the sun 
would never be wholly below the horizon from the 



XORVVAN THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 229 

last of May to the middle of July. As it is, what with 
the mountains acting like screens, and the frequent 
rain-clouds acting like thick curtains, the sunlight is 
practically toned down part of the time into quiet 
grays, but there is no real darkness for two months 
out of twelve. 

The dark months of midwinter are just past their 
solstitial climax when the fishing season begins in 
January, and in stormy weather it is a black world up 
here when one has no glimpse of sun, moon or stars. 
In clear weather, however, with all the land snow- 
covered, reflecting moonlight and starlight, and with 
the splendid flicker and glow of the aurora filling half 
the sky, they say the beauty of the region is some- 
thing almost beyond belief.* 

Though we are well within the Arctic Circle, we 
have by no means reached the limit of civilization. 
Look again at Map 1, and on another island, about 
midway between 69° and 70° latitude, the town of 
Tromso is set down. There also we are to make a 
visit. 

Position gS' Buying £sh in a. busy Arctic trading 
port, — Tromso 

Here we see some of the typical fishing boats at 
close range. It is market day, and with a town popu- 
lation of 6,000 to be fed, retail business is usually 
very good. At those stands up in the square ahead of 
us, vegetables, eggs, butter, cheese, and such things, 
are for sale. Notice the electric-lighting equipment; 
though this is only about 1,400 miles from the North 



*The descriptions of effects seen by Bayard Taylor (Northfrn Travel) and 
Du Chaillu (.The Land of The Midnight Sun) are wonderfully picturesque. 

Positions 94-95. Map 1 



230 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Pole, people know all about modern scientific inven- 
tions, and take advantage of them. The town has a 
systematic water-supply from a lake on hills above. 
There are good schools here, a theatre, a museum of 
natural history and curiosities, several churches and 
a number of good shops. 

The Wellman Arctic Expedition sailed from here 
in July, 1906, for their Spitzbergen headquarters. 

The provincial governor of Finmarken has his 
official residence here, and the place is also the seat 
of a Lutheran bishop, so Tromso has its local aristoc- 
racy and a little circle of distinctly superior, cultivated 
people. 

A considerable part of even the school work has to 
be done in winter by lamplight, for during several 
weeks the sun does not rise before ten o'clock in the 
forenoon, and sets by two o'clock or earlier; and, be- 
sides, stormy weather often obscures the short period 
of daylight. 

That church fronting on the square is Roman 
Catholic, for the benefit of many sailors from Mediter- 
ranean ports who come in here with vessels, taking on 
cargoes of cod, herring, fish and whale-oils for south- 
ern merchants. Ordinary labor goes on at almost any 
hour of the twenty-four in summer-time, and a 
stranger feels a bewildered wonder as to when Tromso 
folk ever do their sleeping! 

If you would like to understand the local at- 
mosphere of such a place, read Boyesen's Against 
Heavy Odds, the story of a Norwegian boy with a 
gift for scientific invention, told by another Norweg- 
ian. The scene of the tale is actually laid at Vardo, 
over east of the North Cape, but in about this same 
latitude, though Tromso here is a larger town, with 
a much larger business. If you would know the poetic 

Position 95. Map 1 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 231 

and romantic side of life hereabouts, read Jonas Lie's 
The Barque Future, and Weird Tales from Northern 
Seas. 

An enterprising photographer here takes pictures 
of tourists by the light of the Midnight Sun, produc- 
ing unique souvenirs of a northern journey. 

Several years ago an English author wrote an en- 
tertaining volume* about the experiences of a camp- 
ing party in the regions between here and the North 
Cape. Their methods were those of up-to-date city 
people, but the idea of summer camping in Finmarken 
is nothing new ; Lapps have, in their own fashion, done 
it for centuries. A two-hour journey from Tromso 
will take us out to one of their summer huts. 

Position g6. People of the frigid North, hstpphome 
and family in the Tromsdal 

To reach here from the island town one rows across 
a channel to the mainland at the east, then walks or 
rides in a pony cart for some distance through a rather 
low, marshy valley. 

These people live in winter farther inland, across 
the Swedish frontier, but come over here for a while 
every year to take advantage of the fresh pasturage 
for their reindeer, and to have a chance to sell fur 
boots, horn spoons, and such things of domestic manu- 
facture to tourists that land at Tromso. 

Remembering what has already been said* of these 
aboriginal people and their ways, we can readily tell 
which of the children are boys and which are girls, 
in spite of the close resemblance of those clumsy 

*S. H. Kent: Within the Arctic Circk. 

♦Pages IQ2-202. 



Position 96. Map 1 



232 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

clothes of skin and coarse homespun. The hut here is 
quite different from the one we saw before ; it is more 
Hke what these people Hve in during the winter on 
Swedish territory. Inside this evil-smelHng cabin, a 
dinner pot hangs from a cross-bar over a fire on a 
stone hearth in the middle of the one room, and the 
whole family eat from it with spoons of wood or 
horn. If they are particularly fastidious of their 
class they may use individual wooden bowls, but, as 
to the manner in which the dishes are "cleaned," the 
less said the better. 

The man at the left has just lassoed that reindeer 
while it was feeding some distance away up the val- 
ley. They have near here a sort of "corral" or yard 
surrounded by wooden pickets into which the animals 
can be driven and penned when necessary. 

The transportation of this family's belongings from 
summer to winter location, or vice versa, is made 
while the ground is snow-covered, by means of rein- 
deer pulks and dog sledges. A pulk is a canoe-shaped 
affair, with a wooden frame and a covering of rein- 
deer hide, usually about five feet long, a foot and a 
half wide and in the center a foot deep. The deer's 
harness is very simple — just a collar made of the 
hide of one of his own relatives, a single trace lead- 
ing from the collar along under the belly to the for- 
ward end of the pulk, and a single long rein of deer- 
hide attached to the left horn. A loop at the end of 
the rein passes around the driver's right thumb, and 
a good deal of slack is wound about the wrist. It 
is no easy task learning to drive a reindeer with that 
rig, and if you want to hear some graphic accounts 
of the ordeals suffered by a novice, you should read 



Position 96. Map 1 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 233 

Du Chaillu/'^ He did, after a good many rough-and- 
tumble experiences, learn to be almost as expert as 
the Lapps who taught him. Under the most favor- 
able conditions of snow and weather one can, with 
such an equipage, cover one hundred English miles in 
twenty-four hours. 

Some Lapps who come over to this part of the 
coast in the spring join the crews of fishing boats, 
and spend the season at the island "banks," but the 
seafaring members of the race are fewer than those 
who get their living from reindeer herds on terra 
firma. From time immemorial this aboriginal peo- 
ple have been credited by their Norse neighbors with 
occult influence over the Powers of the air. In former 
years it was no very uncommon thing for a good 
Lutheran skipper to cross with silver the palm of 
some locally famous Lapp, in order to secure favor- 
able winds for an outward voyage ! 

As we proceed on our own route we pass — accord- 
ing to circumstances — by, or up-and-down, one of the 
most picturesque of all Norway's innumerable fjords. 
Its location is marked 97 on Map 1, just east of 
Tromso. 

Position gy, ^n route to North Cape, skirting pre- 
cipitous cliffs and narrow straits of I^yngenfjord 

This is, if possible, even more stupendous in 
grandeur than the fjords farther south, for a good 
deal of the way the sheer cliffs rise like this, almost 
perpendicular to the water, and tower overhead three- 
quarters of a mile, straight above the steamer's deck. 
Not even Norwegian thrift can wring a living out 

*Tlte Land of The Midnight Sun. 



Positions 96-97. Map 1 



234 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

of the land in many spots along this fjord. The 
patches of green moss or grass or stunted shrubs that 
do live here and there in sunny crevices are not enough 
to warrant attempts at human habitation, though a 
sail of only an hour or two would bring us to a little 
harbor where there is a tiny hamlet with a church. 

Great numbers of sea-fowl of various species haunt 
these waters. A considerable amount of the costly 
eiderdown of commerce comes from coast islands and 
promontories in this vicinity, and is an important 
source of revenue for the few inhabitants of the 
region. It is gathered during the mating season, 
when the eider-ducks, both female and male, strip 
the delicate stuff from their own breasts to line the 
nest for their young. If the down is removed from 
the nest the birds almost always manage to provide 
a second lining. A single nest sometimes yields to a 
daring cliff-climber a quarter-pound of down. It 
takes four pounds of the crude material to give one 
pound of absolutely perfect fluffy down, but the latter 
is worth ten dollars a pound, so there is great financial 
temptation to keep men and boys at the dangerous 
trade of gathering it, for the decoration of fair ladies' 
opera cloaks in far-away Berlin and Vienna and Paris. 

On once more towards the northeast our own route 
continues, as outlined on Map 1, until it reaches, in 
a little less than 71° of latitude, the northernmost town 
in all the world. The place is marked 98. 

Position g8, Hammerfest, the world's northernmost 
town, 70° 40' latitude 

Direction — ^We are facing nearly south. Surround- 
ings — ^A steep mountain rises behind us. 



Positions 97-98. Map 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 235 

These ledges underfoot arc part of an island which 
reaches off eastward (left) for about ten miles to a 
channel separating it from the mainland. 

The dull, foggy appearance of the place as we see 
it to-day is due to a drizzling rain, such as tourists 
find here too frequently for their comfort. However, 
here, as at Tromso and Svolvaer, the same warm 
ocean currents that help cause the frequent rains, also 
serve to keep the winters mild. This harbor below 
the hill never freezes. Vessels can go in and out all 
winter long. 

That street alongside the harbor skirts the bay all 
the way around; the principal business is naturally 
transacted there in the neighborhood of the over- 
fragrant warehouses, full of fish, and even more highly 
perfumed establishments, where cod-liver oil is boiled 
down for the export trade. A good many whaling 
vessels, both Norwegian and foreign, put in here for 
supplies on their way to farther Arctic waters — 
around Spitzbergen and elsewhere. That is the 
Lutheran church whose spire we see over in the south- 
ern quarter of the town. In Vincent's Norsk, Lapp 
and Finn, you can read an account of a Lapp wedding 
which the author witnessed there (or rather in an 
earlier church on the same site). The Catholic Church 
for foreign sailors is out of range. In 1890 two- 
thirds of Hammerfest were destroyed by fire, the 
perpetual menace to property in Norway's timber- 
built northern towns, where fires and lights must nec- 
essarily be in use so large a part of the year. There 
is, however, plenty of capital and energy here, and 
the place has been rebuilt in even better shape than 
before. Between tw^o and three thousand people have 
permanent homes here, almost everybody being con- 
nected in some way with seafaring trades. 

Position 98. Map 1 



236 ^JRWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

This rocky pasture where the goats are indus- 
triously nibbUng for their Uving, looks barren after 
one has seen the fertile valleys of the southern 
provinces, yet even here grasses and mosses per- 
sistently grow on the never-ceasing invitation of the 
summer sun. Saxifrage and other wild flowers bloom 
in odd nooks and crannies of the rocks, inaccessible 
to hungry goats, and, for a few short weeks each 
year, gay butterflies float airily over this hillside, just 
as if the icy waste of the Polar Seas were all a myth 
of the geographers. 

Farther and farther still our journey reaches to- 
wards the polar extremity of Europe. It is peculiarly 
difficult for a passenger on one of the summer ex- 
cursion steamers to get the proper amount of sleep, 
for daylight is continuous, and everybody seems to 
lose count of the time, so that some people are talk- 
ing and moving about the boat at all hours of the 
twenty-four. Besides, there is always something to 
see, either a picturesque shore-line, a leaping dolphin, 
a shoal of porpoises at play, or some marvellous color 
effect in sky and sea. The vessel ploughs on and on 
through the Arctic waters, until at last that happens 
which happened to the mediaeval sailor in Long- 
fellow's verses : — * 

"And then up rose before me, 

Upon the water's edge. 
The huge and haggard shape 
Of that unknown North Cape 

Whose form is like a wedge." 



*The Discoverer of the North Cape. 



Positions 98°99. Map i 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 237 

PoBition gg North Cape from the weatf near mid- 
night 

Here it stands, reaching out into the Arctic Ocean 
at the limit of European lands. We are on the west 
side, facing a little south of eastward; that land in 
the distance is another part of Magero or ''Barren 
Island," from which this point extends. The land- 
ing place is at Hornvik Bay, over at the farther 
(northeast) side of the long headland of dark 
purplish-gray slate rock. Passengers not ambitious 
to land and climb to the summit of the cliff, often 
spend the waiting time, while the steamer lies at 
anchor, fishing for cod, haddock and coal-fish (sei) 
from the deck. The more adventurous land from 
small boats, in a sunny hollow, where violets and but- 
tercups make the most of the scanty soil, and climb 
by a rough, rocky path up at an angle of nearly forty- 
five degrees, to the almost level summit. Along some 
particularly bad portions of the way a cable has been 
set in iron stanchions, so as to make the path per- 
fectly safe, however difficult it sometimes seems to in- 
experienced climbers. Scientific observers say the top 
of the cliff was planed off ages ago by the slow, in- 
exorable movement of some heavy glacier down to 
the sea. One walks over it about a third of a mile 
to the end of the point, and then stands nine hundred 
and sixty-eight feet above these rippling waters. 

Away up on the point, though we cannot see it 
from here now, is a granite column recording the 
visit of King Oscar II in 1873, and a beacon near 
by commemorates a visit of Emperor Wilhelm II in 
1891. There is a little shelter-hut besides, for refuge 
in case of a sudden storm. The rest of the island, 
as one sees it from the higher level, is a barren 
plateau, with ponds here and there, scanty grass, a 

PositioB SH/. M*pJ 



238 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

few low berry bushes and occasional banks of snow 
in sheltered places among the ledges. 

This is the farthest point that most northern travel- 
ers ever reach. Here they come to see the 
Midnight Sun sweep along the northern horizon at 
our left, above the waste of open seas. From the 
middle of May to the end of July there is never a 
sunset here, never actually a sunrise. It is all one 
long day. If one comes here about the first of July, 
the sun, at 12 P. M.,* for a distance of about five 
diameters, slowly sweeps along above the edge of the 
visible world, then once more its path curves upward, 
over a sky hardly perceptibly paler than it was at 
high noon. Sometimes one arrives on a rainy day. 
Sometimes the horizon turns cloudy just at the criti- 
cal moment. Sometimes a fog-bank rises from the 
sea and wraps the Cape itself in a blinding scarf of 
soft, clinging gray mist. In such cases the sun has 
to be taken for granted, but at least one has seen 
the utmost polar reach of Europe,t the land where 
the highest type of human civilization has been 
worked out through long centuries of sunrise and sun- 
sets. 

In case a fog does arise while one is up there on 
the rocks, he is grateful for a wire which has been 
stretched from post to post, all the way back to the 
head of the path where the rope-rail begins. Without 
some such security it would be easy in a dense fog to 
lose the sense of direction, and to walk off the edge 
of the cliff into space. 



*We are here so far east of Greenwich that local time is an hour ahead of 
Greenwich. 

tThis is at least commonly reckoned as the most northerly point of Eu- 
rope, though it is not on the mainland, but on an island. The most norther- 
ly point of the actual mainland is Nordkyn, forty miles or so east of here, 
but that is in not quite so high a latitude. 

PMition 99. Map 1 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 239 

We ourselves are to see land and ocean and sky 
even farther north than this limit of the ordinary ex- 
cursion and mail steamers. The Hamburg- American 
Line in midsummer sends a fine vessel away up still 
nearer the Pole, as far as Spitzbergen. 

Take a last look at Map 1, for the sake of a better 
realizing sense of the extreme verge of the habitable 
world to which we are to penetrate. 

We shall be at nearly 80° latitude, that is, as far 
north of Christiania as Christiania itself is north of 
Naples or Constantinople. Our last position is 
marked 100. 



Position loo. The midnight sun in July over cliffs 
of Spitzbergen and the Arctic Ocean 

We are facing directly towards the Pole at twelve 
o'clock on a July night. At this very same moment 
that same sun is marking noon for dwellers at Samoa 
and on the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific! 

Shall we let a master of word painting* help us to 
see color in our outlook at this moment? 

"Far in the north the sun lay in a bed of 
saffron light. ... A few bars of dazzling 
orange cloud floated above him, and, still higher 
in the sky, where the saffron melted through 
delicate rose-color into blue, hung wreaths of 
vapor, touched with pearly, opaline flushes of 
pink and golden gray. The sea was a web of pale 
slate-color, shot through with threads of orange 
and saffron from the dance of a myriad shifting 
and twinkling ripples. The air was filled with 
the soft, mysterious glow, and even the very 
azure of the southern sky seemed to shine through 
a net of golden gauze." 



♦Bayard Taylor in Northern Travel 



Position 100. Map 1 



240 NORWAY THROUGH THE STP:RE0SC0PE 

Our vessel lies in Advent Bay, off the west coast 
of Spitzbergen, whose lonely cliffs rise out of these 
Polar waters at our right. The shores ahead are 
around an inlet, known as Ice Fjord. It is a strange, 
uninhabited land, which nobody claims to own. Cen- 
turies ago there were some small settlements of whale 
fishers along this coast, but the tradition of them is 
now hazy. In this twentieth century once in a while 
a vessel comes ; a vessel goes ; nobody calls the place 
home. The island is partly covered by glaciers, but 
warm ocean currents sweep so near shore that the 
ice and snow melt in summer on the lower levels. A 
considerable number of mosses, lichens, and even 
dwarf flowering plants, grow in sheltered spots, 
coaxed out by the sunlight of one continuous summer 
day four months long. A few Arctic hares and foxes 
are undisputed masters of the lonesome land. 

Nansen, the famous Norwegian explorer, sailed 
past here in 1893 in the Fram on his daring quest of 
a passage to the unknown seas or lands about the 
Pole. The Pole itself is only eight hundred miles 
away, straight ahead, under that dazzling disk of the 
sun. 

It was from this island that Andre's Polar Expedi- 
tion set out in one of the old-fashioned balloons. Here 
also the Wellman Expedition in 1906 were making 
preparations for a start in a "dirigible" balloon. 

Beyond Spitzbergen at our right reach the little- 
known wastes of the Arctic Ocean. At our left, be- 
yond another broad reach of sea, is northern Greenland. 

Straight behind us lies the world of civilized men. 
A thousand miles behind us, Trondhjem sits on the 
green shores of her historic fjord. Still farther south, 
in almost the same straight line, the people of Christ- 
iania are now asleep in their beds under the soft, dusky 

Position 100. Map 1 



NORWA^' THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 241 

twilight that marks their midsummer night from the 
day. Farther yet to the south, the stars may be 
twinkHng at this very moment in the heavens over 
Hamburg, or sparkling like tropic fireflies through 
the feathery palm trees of far-away Tunis beside the 
Mediterranean Sea. 

And here? 

As the hands of a watch mark the day's advance, 
the sun will sweep steadily higher in its obliquely 
circular path around the heavens, till it reaches its 
highest point in the south at noon; then it will move 
lower till it reaches again the point where we see it 
now. About the end of August, its lowest sweep at 
midnight will take it just below the horizon. By the 
end of October it will cease to sweep above the hori- 
zon at all, and for four long months there will be 
never a sunrise over these cliflFs and waters, but only 
moon and stars, and the forever mysterious, beckon- 
ing Northern Lights, whose speechless signal no 
mortal creature yet understands. 

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of 
Thy -fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou 
hast ordained. 

What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or 
the son of man that Thou visit est himf 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE 
WORLD 

So ripe a modern scholar as Professor Rhys of 
Oxford has said: — "^"Few of the states of modern 
Europe have not had their history profoundly modi- 
fied by the Scandinavian conquest of the Viking 
period." 

Every man or woman of European descent living 
to-day is, in some degree, an heir of the Scandinavian 
North. Especially is this true of all of us who have 
French, English, Scotch or Irish blood in our veins. 
For us it is almost as strikingly true as for a pure- 
blooded Norwegian, that every day of our lives we 
are drawing on legacies from Norway. The very 
existence of American civilization is the result of 
forces in which Norse energies directly or indirectly 
played a large part. An eminent American scholar, 
the late John Fiske, says on this question: — *"The 
descendants of these Northmen formed a very large 
proportion of the population of the East Anglian 
counties of England, and consequently of the men 
who founded New England. The East Anglian coun- 
ties have been conspicuous for resistance to tyranny 
and for freedom of thought." The forms of many 
words we use to-day in talk at the family breakfast- 
table — a multitude of now common-place details in 
our every day experience we owe in part to the ener- 
getic service of Norse folk, generations ago, when 



*New Princeton Review, Jan., 
■fThe Discovery of America. 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 243 

the civilization of to-day was slowly, gradually tak- 
ing shape out of the crude ways and means of the 
Middle Ages. 

If we had not the plain record of history to declare 
the facts, it might seem improbable that Norway could 
ever have made great and persistent contributions to 
the growth of civilization. True, it is a land of mar- 
vellous natural beauty, but it is so small! so poor in 
comparison with sunnier realms! Its total area is 
but a trifle more than that of Labrador. Its southern- 
most shores reach only as far south as the middle of 
Hudson's Bay. Its North Cape peers into the Arctic 
Ocean only twelve hundred miles from the Pole. 
More than a third of all its area is two thousand feet 
or more above sea level, and, of the remaining two- 
thirds, so much is given over to lakes or thick forests 
or barren heaths, that there remain barely thirty-five 
hundred square miles of land (half the space of 
Wales) wherefrom a farmer can coax the earth to 
give him food. Outside the only three large towns — 
Christiania, Bergen and Trondhjem — the population 
to-day averages less than fifteen persons to a square 
mile. 

^lore than a thousand years ago this little North- 
land had developed a civilization distinctly advanced 
for those times, and developed it to a considerable 
extent without outside help, through the innate energy 
and creative activity of her own children. Investiga- 
tions made during the last hundred years among old 
Norse burial mounds have brought to light an amaz- 
ing array of partly destroyed property belonging to 
chieftains who lived from ten to fourteen hundred 
years ago — swords, daggers and shields of excellent 
workmanship; rings, bracelets and diadems quite 
worthy of a great lady's wearing; dishes of silver and 



244 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

gold ; carved drinking horns, cups and platters ; woven 
and embroidered stuffs and other belongings that indi- 
cate a relatively very high standard of intelligent 
living. 

A glance at Map 2 shows how deeply the coast- 
line of Norway is cut by the sea. Long, narrow fjords 
(inlets) reach crookedly up into the mountainous 
land, thirty, sixty, in one case (the Sognefjord) one 
hundred miles. The old-time Norse people were 
brought up to be as much at home on the water as 
on the land. Vlk (pronounced veek), in the Norse 
tongue, means ''inlet" or bay; the men who lived 
along the fjords came to be known as "bay-men" or 
Vtk-ings — hence the name Viking. The word has 
come down to us with a somewhat misleading pro- 
nunciation (Vi-king) that seems to imply a sug- 
gestion of social rank not at all in the original. 

Green, in his Conquest of England, says : — 

''It was the hard struggle for life that left its 
stamp to the last on the temper of the Scandi- 
navian people. The very might of the forces with 
which they battled gave a grandeur to their re- 
sistance. It was to the sense of human power 
that woke as the fisher-boat rode out the storm, 
as the hunter ploughed his lonely way through the 
blinding snowdrift, as the husbandman waged his 
dogged warfare with unkindly seasons and bar- 
ren fields, that these men owed their indomitable 
energy, their daring self-reliance, their readiness 
to face overwhelming odds. . . . 

"Courage indeed was a heritage of the whole 
German race, but none felt like the man of the 
North the glamour and enchantment of war." 

At least as early as the eighth century — perhaps 
even earlier — adventurous Vikings began to extend 
their summer voyages beyond the home fjords and 
the fringing skerries (islands), sailing as far as Den- 



■WHAT XOR\VA^' HAS DOXE FOR THK WORF.D 245 

mark and Germany, Great Britain and France. At 
first these exploring and marauding expeditions were 
concluded each in one season, the adventurers return- 
ing home for the winter, rich in tales of wonder and 
in convincing stores of booty. We have access to both 
sides of the story in regard to some of those old voy- 
ages — one side in the form of ancient Norse Sagas, 
and the other side in the chronicles of the foreign set- 
tlements where the Northerners were dreaded as 
pirates. In regard to an expedition of the year 846, 
for instance, the Norse story sounds almost like a 
fairy-tale — how the men sailed and sailed to a strange, 
far-oflF shore; how they explored a long river and 
came to a curious island town, unlike Norwegian 
towns, but rich in treasure ; how a thick mist en- 
veloped everything and a terrible pestilence fell upon 
them so that they had to come away, leaving the mist- 
veiled city to its mysterious fate. Yet the travelers' 
tale was perfectly true, standing proven to-day by 
existing French chronicles. The shore was that of 
France. The alluring river was the Seine ; the strange 
town was old Paris on its island, where now flower- 
sellers oflfer their wares almost in the shadow of 
Notre Dame; the thick mist and the pestilence must 
have been a heavy fog, and an attack of that too well- 
known scourge of the Dark Ages, the so-called 
''plague." The pious Parisians believed it was sent 
that time by high Heaven, on purpose to confound 
their pagan assailants ! 

Norsemen who had adventurously knocked about 
the coast towns and river towns of Germany, France, 
Great Britain and Ireland, could not afterwards be 
content to fit into small places in the overcrowded 
home land. This was especially true after the execu- 
tive genius of Harold Fairhair (860-930 A. D.) had 



246 NORWAY THROUGIi THE STEREOSCOPE 

broken down the local sovereignty of previously in- 
dependent Norwegian nobles (jarls), and forced 
hitherto independent districts to become parts of one 
united kingdom. The outgoing Vikings began to stay 
abroad for longer periods, not simply snatching and 
sailing away from a little English village or an Irish 
monastery, but demanding proprietorship rights from 
their unwilling hosts and settling down on the new 
soil. As early as 835 they had occasionally wintered 
in Ireland, and this began to be a more common cus- 
tom. Read any history of England or of Ireland, and 
one finds the same thing happening over and over — 
Norse assaults and victory — Norse occupation of dis- 
puted ground. (The English and Irish chroniclers 
frequently call the newcomers ''Danes," but scholars 
agree that that name meant people from Norway 
oftener than it explicitly meant natives of Denmark.) 
Before Harold Fairhair had got the home kingdom 
into permanent unity, i. e., before 872 A. D., men of 
his race had already won more or less of a footing 
in eastern England (Northumbria and Kent), in 
Caithness, the Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides, in 
Ireland, in Frisia, in the lower valleys of the Seine, 
the Loire and the Garonne, and at various points on 
the Atlantic seaboard of Spain. About 874 they made 
settlements in Iceland, which have continued to the 
present day, and in the latter part of the tenth cen- 
tury founded two colonies on the southwestern coast 
of Greenland, that lasted for about five centuries. As 
has already been noted (page 41), they even reached 
the shores of the North American continent. Leif 
Erikson, a doughty member of the Greenland colony, 
who had been on a visit to the king of Norway, hit 
upon the new land in the year 1000, and in the year 
1003 Thorfinn Karlsevne and wife, Gudrid, with 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD ^47 

three vessels and 140 men, undertook to establish a 
colony there. On account of the hostility of the 
natives, however, they remained but three years. But 
during this period a son was born to Thorfinn and 
Gudrid, who was called Snorre— the first white child 
born on the American continent.* 

The attitude of those Norse conqueror-emigrants 
was that of direct, matter-of-fact good sense. They 
kept loyally to all that seemed distinctly worth while 
in their inherited manners and customs; they adopted 
as frankly whatever seemed distinctly preferable in 
the manners and customs of the strangers in whose 
land they had settled. In the natural course of events 
they married their neighbors' daughters, and so, after 
the lapse of a few generations, their children were as 
much at home in the adopted land as if it had been 
the land of their ancestors. For two hundred years 
Dublin was ruled by Norse monarchs. On the lonely 
island of lona, off the west of Scotland, the Atlantic 
rains still beat on the graves of old Norwegian princes. 

It was almost exactly a thousand years ago that a 
certain Norse leader named Rolf (Rollo, equivalent 
to our "Robert") sailed away from his home near 
Aalesund (Positions 87-88) and voyaged along the 
coast and up the same French river (Seine), that 
his countrymen had explored fifty years earlier. 
He and his followers captured the little town 
then standing where Rouen stands to-day. Finding 
the country fair and fruitful, and appreciating a good 
thing when they saw it, they made up their minds to 
stay. The Rouen people did not want them, neither 
did the countryfolk round about. The French mon- 
arch, Charles the Simple, would have expelled the 



♦See "The Voyages of the Northmen", edited by Professor Julius E. Olson 
Original NarraHves of Early American History Vol. i* 



248 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

uninvited guests if he had been strong enough, but 
he was not strong enough, and he knew it. King 
Charles, therefore, made the best of the situation, and, 
so doing, builded a thousand times better than he 
knew. Making a policy of necessity, he granted to 
Norse Rolf a great tract of Northern France — lands 
on both sides of the Seine — made him Duke of that 
region and gave him Princess Gisela for a wife. 
The fact of this Norse occupation is registered to 
this day in the name "Normandy" (Northman's land), 
as applied to a large district between Paris and the 
English Channel. 

Rolf's action was one of the great, decisive turning 
points in the development of the western world. Free- 
man says, in his standard work on the History of the 
Norman Conquest of England: — 

"The settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and 
their consequent change into Normans, is the 
great continental event of the first half of the 
tenth century. It affected the later history of all 
Europe. The Scandinavians in Gaul embraced 
the creed, the language, and the manners of their 
French neighbors, without losing a whit of their 
old Scandinavian vigor and love of adventure. 
The people thus formed became the foremost 
apostles alike of French chivalry and of Latin 
Christianity. They were the foremost in de- 
votion, the most fervent votaries of their adopted 
creed, the most lavish in gifts to holy places at 
home, the most unwearied in pilgrimages to holy 
places abroad — and they were no less the fore- 
most in war; they were mercenaries, crusaders, 
plunderers, conquerors." 

A son of this Rolf (RoUo) was William Long- 
sword, Duke of Normandy. He had a son known as 
Richard the Fearless. To Richard the Fearless was 
born Richard the Good, and to him in turn Rollo, or 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 249 

Robert the Magnificent. And then, about the year 
1027 or 1028, there was born to Duke Robert a son 
of his own. The old Norse chroniclers speak of this 
son in later life as Viljalm Jarl (Earl or Duke Will- 
iam). We know him best as "William the Conqueror" 
— a man destined to make mighty changes in the 
map of the whole world, and in the lives of millions 
of men still unborn. 

Carlyle, writing of the adventurous voyages of the 
older Vikings, says: — 

"No Homer sang these Norse sea-kings, but 
Agamemnon's was a small audacity and of small 
fruit in the world, to some of them — to Rolf's of 
Normandy, for instance! Rolf or Rollo, Duke 
of Normandy, the wild sea-king, has a share in 
governing England at this hour!" 

Freeman comments on the significance of the Nor- 
man element in European life: — 

"(Norman) conquests brought with them the 
most opposite results in different lands. To free 
England, he (the Norman) gave a line of op- 
pressors, to enslaved Sicily he gave a line of 
beneficent rulers. But to England he gave also 
a conquering nobility, which, in a few genera- 
tions, became as truly English in England as it had 
become French in Normandy. The indomitable 
vigor of the Scandinavian, joined to the buoyant 
vivacity of the Gaul, produced the conquering and 
ruling races of Europe." 

The story of the influence of the Norman Conquest 
in the social and political life of England is too long 
and too complicated to be treated here. It should be 
remembered that Norman ideas and customs were not 
arbitrarily imposed on the English folk, as the cus- 
toms of the conqueror are often imposed on the con- 
quered. That was not the Norse way of doing things. 



250 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

The political and social life of later England for the 
most part simply grew out of the gradual union of 
the old and the new, partaking of both characters as 
a child might inherit traits and tendencies from both 
parents. Where Norman influences proved the more 
persistent and dominant, the case was not that of en- 
forced conformity to the command of a stronger 
party, but rather the survival of something that had 
proved itself practically acceptable to a majority. 

At the time of the Norman invasion, the speech of 
England's people was mainly a growth from Saxon 
forms that had been carried there by earlier Germanic 
invaders and immigrants — "Anglo-Saxon" it is called ; 
i. e., Saxon as spoken on English soil. But the in- 
coming Normans, constituting, as they did, after the 
decisive battle of Hastings (1066), the rich, aristo- 
cratic and dominant class, gradually made their neigh- 
bors familiar with a host of new words and new ex- 
pressions, while, at the same time, they were learn- 
ing their neighbors' own tongue. Thus in time there 
came to be combined with the plain, homely Anglo- 
Saxon vernacular more and more of the French which 
they or their forefathers had been using for a cen- 
tury and a half over at the other side of the Channel. 
The result is that the English language as spoken 
to-day by well-educated people includes even more 
Norman-French and Latin than Anglo-Saxon. When 
we say "Good morning," we go back to the Anglo- 
Saxon and use words of old Teutonic origin; "god 
morgen" was the ancient Saxon form. When some- 
body remarks, "The newsboy was an hour late in de- 
livering the Journal," we are drawing largely on our 
Norman-French. "News" comes from the French 
"nouvelles"; "hour" is the Norman-French "heure" ; 
"deliver" is the Norman-French "delivrer" ; "journal" 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 251 

is the French "journal," a derivative from the Latin 
"diurnalis" (daily). 

As a rule, the short, common words used by plain 
folk in speaking of simple universal human feelings, 
needs, and acts, and of the relationships of plain, daily 
life, are oftenest of Anglo-Saxon origin. Expressions 
pertaining to literature, science and art, to exact 
analytical thinking on any special subject, to abstract 
ideas, or to subtile variations and complications of 
thought, are more frequently derived from the French 
language, which the Normans imported into Great 
Britain, or from the Latin, whos e use they encouraged 
and cultivated. 

(In the above sentence, words of French or Latin 
derivation are underlined.) 

Freeman, whose History of the Norman Conquest 
of England is a standard authority on the subject, 
mentions that we are indebted to the Normans in Eng- 
land for the beginning of our system of hereditary 
surnames. Until after the Conquest such appellations 
as were added to a man's Christian name to distinguish 
him from other men with the same name, belonged 
merely to him, being descriptive of him as an indi- 
vidual. The continuance of a ''fo-name," as it was 
called, made it lose its explicit meaning; a youth 
named Black was not necessarily swarthy; a boy 
named Farmer might actually be an artisan and not 
a farmer at all — the name indicated not his qualities 
but his descent — and so it is to this day. 

Again, as Freeman states, the present English sys- 
tem of primogeniture, which puts the responsibilities 
and privileges of nobility on the shoulders of only one 
man in the family — that, too, is an inheritance from 
the Normans. Its practical bearing on British politi- 



252 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

cal conditions down to this very hour is only one of 
many legacies from the Scandinavian-French who 
insisted on becoming Englishmen away back in the 
eleventh-twelfth centuries. 

The modern use of the old French words ''county" 
for *'shire," and "mayor" for "port-reeve," is a linger- 
ing trace of Norman-French influence in England 
centuries ago. 

The Norse element in the great international 
movement known as the Crusades was an exceed- 
ingly vigorous and effective element. For more than 
a hundred years (1090-1194), while Christian Europe 
was making successive efforts to take the Holy Land 
from its Mohammedan masters, Norse and Norman- 
French knights took part in several of the religio- 
military expeditions. Quite as important to the world 
was the fact, that, during almost the whole period of 
the Crusades, the Normans were masters of the island 
of Sicily, having subdued its former Mohammedan 
rulers. It was at just that time of immense im- 
portance who should be master of Sicily, for Moham- 
medan energies exerted from that center could work 
immense damage to Christian fleets sailing through 
the Mediterranean on their way to Palestine. The 
fact of Christian occupation there at just that period 
contributed largely to the strength of the movement 
as a whole; consequently, it had a good deal to do 
with bringing about the practical results of the 
Crusades. Moreover, the Christian government of 
Sicily at just that critical period was extraordinarily 
tolerant, and did a great deal to spread through 
Europe the special scientific knowledge and artistic 
culture of the Saracens. 

Though all the hardship and strife and bloodshed 
of the Crusades failed to establish Christian possession 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 253 

of the Holy Sepulchre, Europe soon found results of 
a totally different sort transforming her own con- 
ditions. For instance, the home-returning Crusaders 
brought with them from the East various new ideas 
about the weaving and coloring of cloths, and about 
the use of heavy cloths to spread over stone floors 
and to drape over bare walls. Princes and nobles 
and merchants who had traveled and seen something 
of the East began to use such cloths (carpets and 
curtains) in their houses. Specimens of glassware 
made in Tyre were , studied and copied in Venice, and 
the mistresses of grand houses aspired to own at 
least a few pieces in addition to their stock of less 
beautiful ware. Glass mirrors (to replace those of 
poHshed metal) were another luxury whose idea came 
from the Orient. Many new ideas about carving and 
painting, the construction of mosaic-work, the em- 
broidering of silk and woolen stuffs and the setting 
of jewels were brought back to Europe by men who 
had seen and admired the marvellously superior 
craftsmanship of the East. Above all, the foreign 
journeyings of so large a number of the most alert 
and energetic men of two centuries opened the eyes 
of Europe to the fact that the world was a much 
bigger world, and human knowledge might have a 
much wider field, than Europeans had been in the 
habit of supposing. It set the studiously inclined to 
literary and artistic research, and so gradually led to 
the enormously important Renaissance movement — the 
"re-birth" or revival of Art and Letters in Europe. 
It set the adventurous to dreaming and scheming 
about discoveries and explorations in distant lands, 
and so led to the great movement of world-voyagers 
— Marco Polo in China; Columbus in the Atlantic; 
Vasco Da Gama in the Indian Ocean; Balboa on his 



254 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

"peak in Darien"; the sturdy captains who planted 
in the far-away Spice Islands the magnificent com- 
mercial organism of the Dutch East India Company; 
Raleigh and Drake and that gallant company of dar- 
ing souls from Queen Elizabeth's England. It would 
be interesting to know, if we could, how far the actual 
blood, as well as the heroic spirit of the old Norse- 
men lived again in the person of those voyagers whose 
cry was Westward Ho ! 

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, one of the most scholarly 
and distinguished of Norse-Americans in the nine- 
teenth century, in his Story of Norzuay, summed-up 
his countrymen's service to European politics as 
follows : — 

"The ability to endure discipline without loss 
of self-respect, voluntary subordination for mutual 
benefit, and the power of orderly organization, 
based upon these qualities, these were the con- 
tributions of the Norse Vikings to the political 
life of Europe. The feudal state, which, with all 
its defects, is yet the indispensable basis of a 
higher civilization, has its root in the Germanic 
instinct of loyalty — of mutual allegiance between 
master and vassal; the noble spirit of independ- 
ence, which restrains and limits the power of the 
ruler, and at a later stage leads to constitutional 
government, is even more distinctly a Norse than 
a Germanic characteristic." 

We might discuss other influences of the great Vik- 
ing exodus, but we shall merely allude to the literary 
impulse that came with the Northern invaders. 
Macaulay says of the Northmen that settled in 
France : — 

"They abandoned their native speech and 
adopted the French. They found it a barbarous 
jargon; they fixed it in writing; they employed 
it in legislation, in poetry, and romance." 



WHAT NORWAY HAS DONE FOR THE WORLD 255 

The skalds (bards) and saga-men of the North 
produced a great Hterature. Much has been done in 
recent years in the way of turning the attention of 
the EngHsh-speaking pubHc to its rich treasures. Here 
are the words of a great English scholar,* appealing 
to Englishmen to study the old Norse poetry of the 
Elder Edda, and thus see back ''into the Homeric age 
of our forefathers." He says : — 

"Any real, however scanty, knowledge of these 
old Northmen's finest poetry and noblest era of 
history is of solid value and interest. The men 
from whom these poems sprung took no small 
share in the making of England; their blood is 
in our veins, their speech in our mouths, their 
law in our courts, their faith in our hearts; and 
if there be, as the sage has said, no ingratitude 
so base as self-forgetfulness, surely we of all men 
should look back to the great Viking-tide as a 
momentous era in the world's history and our 
own." 



♦Introduction to Corpus Poeticum Bareale, a very learned work by Vigfus- 
son and Powell of Oxford, containing both the originals and translations ot 
all the Old Xorse poems; 



RULERS OF NORWAY 

The home politics of Norway previous to the mid- 
dle of the ninth century are so interwoven with fanciful 
and semi-mythical legends, that they can hardly be 
stated now with accuracy. We do know that different 
districts of the country were controlled by different 
chiefs or petty kings. One of these local rulers, whose 
realm included the present site of Christiania, was 
Half dan Svarte (Half dan the Swarthy or "Black"), 
and his son Harold Haarfager (Harold Fairhair) 
succeeded him in the year 860 A. D. By Harald's 
energetic efforts, all the previously independent dis- 
tricts were united in one kingdom of Norway, under 
his own rule. He reigned until 930; then the fierce 
quarrels of his own sons tore the kingdom again 
asunder. Inherited feuds in the royal family kept the 
country in a turmoil for several generations. The 
following are the names and dates of the Norwegian 
sovereigns after Harold Fairhair: — 

Erik Bloody-axe, 930-934, 

Haakon the Good, 934-960, 

Haakon Graafeld, 960-965, 

Haakon Jarl, 965-995. 

He is the "Jarl Haakon" who figures in Long- 
fellow's Saga of King Olaf, the poetic rendering of 
part of an ancient Norse tale. The coming of Olaf 
Tryggvason with rival claims to the throne forced him 
to flight, and he, with one of his bondmen, was con- 
cealed from his enemies by Thora, a former sweet- 
heart. The bondman betrayed him. 

Olaf Tryggvason, 995-1000. 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 257 

He had a marvellously romantic history, which is 
also retold by Longfellow. In childhood he had been 
captured by enemies and sold as a slave in a foreign 
land ; there, as a youth, he was recognized and rescued 
by a Norse kinsman; educated in Britain, he returned 
to Norway and seized the throne from Jarl Haakon. 
His wooing of Queen Sigrid of Sweden makes a 
spirited chapter of the poet's story. Olaf made some 
advances in the introduction of Christianity. He took 
part in one of the most celebrated of the early Norse 
assaults on England, ravaging large sections of 
Northumbria and Kent, and even laying siege to old 
London. (See histories of England.) 

Eirik Jarl (Earl Erik), ) looo-lOlS. 

Svein Jarl, j 

After Olaf Tryggvason's fall at the battle of 
Svolder, the kingdom was divided between these 
brothers, sons of Earl Haakon, whom Olaf had 
displaced. 

Olaf the Saint, 1016-1030. / 

This king practically secured the establishment of 
Christianity in the realm. The splendid cathedral at 
Trondhjem (Position 92) was built as a shrine for his 
relics when they were found to work miracles. 

Svein Knutsson (son of the 

Danish king, Knut), 1030-1035. 

King Knut is the same man who figures in English 
history as King Canute ; he was ruler of Denmark and 
England. Everybody knows the old story of how 
British flatterers annoyed him with over-extravagant 
estimates of his power, and how he rebuked them by 
commanding the tide to keep back from his seat on a 
sea-beach — the result demonstrating that there were 
Powers higher than he. Whether true or not, the 



258 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

story is a good one. It was King Knut that con- 
tributed greatly to the revolt against Olaf the Saint, 
and after the latter's death, secured the kingdom for 
his son. 

Magnus the Good, 1035-1047, 

Harold Hardruler, 1047-1066, 

Olaf the Quiet, 1066-1093. 

He founded the town of Bergen, now second in im- 
portance in the whole kingdom. ( See Positions 48-52. ) 
Magnus Barefoot, 1093-1103. 

He was so called because he affected the kilts and 
bare legs of the Scottish Highlanders. 

Eystein 1 

Olaf I sons of Magnus, 1103-1130. 

Sigurd J 

Sigurd took part in one of the Crusades (1107- 
1111), and was later called the Jorsalfarer (Jeru- 
salem-farer). 

Magnus the Blind, Harold Gille, et al, 1130-1162. 

This was a time of civil wars, in which many fierce 
battles were fought, several of them in or near the 
harbor of Bergen. (See Position 48.) 

Magnus Erlingsson, 1162-1184, 

Sverre Sigurdsson, 1184-1202, 

Haakon Sverresson, 1202-1204, 

Guttorm Sigurdsson, 1204-1204, 

Inge Baardsson, 1204-1217, 

Haakon Haakonsson, 1217-1263. 

Haakon extended the kingdom of Norway to in- 
clude Iceland and Greenland, the Orkneys, Shetlands, 
Faroes and Hebrides, and even the Isle of Man. 
"Valkendorf's Tower" and the "King's Hall," still 
standing in old Bergen, were built during his reign. 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 259 

(See Position 52.) He went over to Scotland 
to settle a national dispute about the ownership of the 
Hebrides, and died in Kirkwall on one of the Orkney 
islands. 

Magnus Lagaboter (Law-mender), 1263-1280. 
Erik Magnusson (Priest-hater), 1280-1299, 
Haakon Magnusson (Haakon V), 1299-1319, 
Magnus Eriksson, or Magnus Smek 

(the Luxurious), 1319-1355. 

In 1319 Magnus was elected to be also King of 
Sweden, but he was unequal to his opportunities, and 
his power was soon curtailed by the people in both 
kingdoms. It was during his reign, near the middle 
of the fourteenth century, that Norway suffered a 
series of fearful calamities — ^the burning of Trond- 
hjem, inundations in some of the more populous val- 
leys, and especially a devastating spread of the 
''plague." 

Haakon Magnusson (Haakon VI), 1355-1380. 
The temporary union of Sweden and Norway was 
dissolved about 1371. Haakon married Princess 
Margaret, daughter of King Valdemar of Denmark, 
and their son inherited both kingdoms. 

Olaf Haakonsson, 1380-1387, 

Margaret of Denmark (regent 
for her nephew, Erik of 
Pomerania), 1387-1412. 

Margaret was the "Northern Semiramis" of 
Europe. The use of the Danish language in Norway 
practically dates from her time. Under her regency 
the three kingdoms, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, 
were united, and in 1397 Erik was crowned at Kal- 
mar (Sweden) by a diet of the three nations. The 
difficulty of maintaining the union proved great in 



260 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Erik's time and almost continually thereafter. His 
own reign was made tumultuous by struggles with 
Germanic members of the great Hanseatic League in 
addition to conflicts with rebellious Swedes and dis- 
satisfied Danes. The Hanseatic League proved strong 
enough to establish its claims to important German 
monopolies of trade, especially that in fish at Bergen. 
(See Position 51.) Norwegian politics for nearly 
four centuries from the time of Margaret of 
Denmark form a singularly troubled story. Sweden 
stayed in the tripartite union (Union of Kalmar) only 
until 1523, but Norway and Denmark remained 
united under Danish monarchs until 1814. The royal 
succession was as follows: — 

Erik of Pomerania, 1389-1442, 

Kristofer of Bavaria, 1442-1448, 

Karl Knutsson, 1449-1450, 

Christian I, 1450-1481, 

Hans, 1481-1513, 

Christian II, 1513-1524. 

This was the King Christian against whose au- 
thority in Sweden young Gustavus Vasa raised the 
famous revolt, resulting in the withdrawal of Sweden 
from the union. 

Frederick I, 1524-1533, 

Christian III, 1537-1559. 

It was during his reign that the doctrines of the 
Protestant Reformation were introduced into Nor- 
way, the old monasteries broken up and Church prop- 
erty appropriated by the Crown. 

Frederick II, 1559-1588, 

Christian IV, 1588-1648. 

This sovereign practically founded Christiania, re- 
building it after Oslo had been destroyed by fire. His 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 261 

Statue stands to-day in the chief market-place. (See 
Position 3. ) 

Frederick III, 1648-1670, 

Christian V, 1670-1699, 

Frederick IV, 1699-1730. 

Frederick was a contemporary of the celebrated 
Charles XII of Sweden. In 1718 Charles undertook 
a military expedition against Norway and laid siege 
to the Norse fortress, at Frederickshald. (See Posi- 
tion 13.) There his troops were repulsed by the Nor- 
wegians, and he himself was killed. 

Christian VI, 1730-1746, 

Frederick V, 1746-1766. 

This was a period of substantial growth and national 
development. Norwegian commerce and shipping 
were largely increased, important scientific and trade 
schools were established, native Norwegians were ap- 
pointed to more of the administrative offices, and 
agriculture, mining and other home industries were 
notably improved in method and effectiveness. 

Christian VII, 1766-1808. 

During a long period of royal incompetency, the 
government was actually in the hands of a succession 
of ministers. Napoleon planned to use Denmark's 
sea-force against Great Britain, and the result was 
that the British twice (1801 and 1807) bombarded 
Copenhagen and captured the whole fleet. 

Frederick VI, 1808-1814, 

Christian Frederick, 1814-1814. 

The Danish government came to grief financially 
through the British blockade of the ports of Den- 
mark and certain unwise measures in the issue of 
paper money. Norway, on the other hand, was in 



262 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

much better condition as to internal resources, and 
the old Norwegian desire for national independence 
grew greater and greater as Denmark's fortunes 
waned. At the close of the Napoleonic wars, addi- 
tional pressure was brought to bear on Denmark by 
the Swedish government, and at the Peace of Kiel in 
1814 Norway was released from her four-centuries- 
long union with Denmark. A Norwegian Constitu- 
tion was framed and adopted, strikingly democratic 
in tone, the document incidentally abolishing all titles 
of nobility in the realm of Norway. The anniversary 
of the adoption of this new Constitution, May 17th, 
has ever since been observed as a public holiday. 

Much to the disappointment of the many Nor- 
wegians who had hoped for complete independence, 
it appeared that the actual terms of the Peace of 
Kiel did not after all secure that independence; on 
the contrary, those terms were such as to place Nor- 
way again under a foreign sovereign — this time under 
the King of Sweden. Russia, Prussia, Austria and 
England united in insistence on the terms of the Peace 
of Kiel, and the monarch was reluctantly acknowl- 
edged ; it was agreed, however, that Norway was to 
retain her free constitution, and in all respects be on 
an equal footing with Sweden in the dual monarchy. 
According to the terms of the new Union, Norway 
had her own Parliament, and the King's Council 
(Cabinet) included Norwegian as well as Swedish 
members. Plis Majesty was expected to spend a cer- 
tain length of time each year on Norwegian soil, and 
he was there given the title of "King of Norway and 
Sweden," instead of "King of Sweden and Norway," 
as phrased over across the border. 

Karl (XIII of Sweden), 1814-1818, 

Karl Johan (XIV of Sweden), 1818-1844. 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 263 

This monarch was the first of the Bernadotte 
family. He had been a marshal in Napoleon's army, 
and was in 1810 elected Crown Prince of Sweden, 
the monarch being old and childless. Karl Johan 
Street, the main business thoroughfare of Christ- 
iania (see Position 5), was named for him, and 
his statue stands now in front of the royal palace 
(Position 8). 

Oscar I, 1844-1859, 

Karl (XV of Sweden), 1859-1872, 

Oscar II, 1872-1905. 

The recent dissolution by the Norwegian Storthing 
(Parliament) of the national union with Sweden 
under H. M. Oscar II, was in reality a foregone con- 
clusion. Such a separation must have come about 
sooner or later, so strong is the sentiment of the Nor- 
wegian people for national sovereignty. The imme- 
diate occasion for the dissolution of the union was 
the impossibility of adjusting certain differences be- 
tween the two countries with regard to diplomatic and 
consular representation in foreign lands. The diplo- 
matic service had been entirely in the hands of 
Sweden. The consuls were appointed by a Cabinet 
consisting of both Swedish and Norwegian members. 
An effort was made to come to an agreement for 
separate consular representation, the diplomatic 
service remaining entirely under Swedish control, but 
Sweden demanded also strict guarantees that all con- 
suls, even Norwegians, appointed by Norwegian au- 
thority, should be subject to the direction and control 
of the Swedish Foreign Office in all matters having 
any bearing whatever on the relations of Norway and 
Sweden to foreign Powers. The alleged reason for 
Sweden's maintaining this position was her exceeding 



264 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

anxiety to present a united front for defense in case 
of war with other European Powers. The reason for 
Norway's refusal was her own exceeding anxiety to 
present to the world a more dignified and independ- 
ent front in matters which she regarded as purely her 
own affair. In May, 1905, the Norwegian Parliament 
passed a bill relative to consular representation, satis- 
factory to Norway. King Oscar vetoed the bill. Now, 
according to the Norwegian Constitution, the king 
can neither be blamed nor censured — the responsibility 
for his governmental acts rests with his cabinet. Even 
his veto without the countersignature of at least one 
of his Norwegian cabinet, is, from a constitutional 
standpoint, non-existent. 

The cabinet ministers remonstrated with the king, 
reminding him that a measure passed unanimously by 
the Parliament and supported by a united cabinet 
could not be vetoed. But the king refused to yield 
the point, whereupon the cabinet resigned. There 
was no possible hope of obtaining a new cabinet, and 
without a cabinet there is no executive department, 
as, according to the Norwegian Constitution, the king 
can rule only through a cabinet. In other words, by 
withholding his sanction to the consular bill under 
these circumstances, the king placed himself outside 
the pale of constitutional government. The Storthing 
(Parliament) took this view of the question, and, on 
June 7, 1905, seized the psychological moment to pro- 
claim, what King Oscar by his procedure had 
virtually effected, a dissolution of the union, and 
then placed the executive power in the hands of the 
cabinet which had refused to serve the king. 

The blow to Sweden was a heavy one. It is, how- 
ever, significant of the high level of thought in both 
countries that the rupture should have been made 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 265 

without harking back to the old-time argument of 
bloodshed. In a debate in the Swedish Parliament at 
the most exciting crisis of the dispute, a member 
cried: — ''It were far better to allow the union to be 
dissolved in peace than to set Swedes and Norweg- 
ians to kilHng each other;" and in this phase of 
twentieth century good sense most Scandinavians were 
heartily agreed. 

In November, 1905, the destiny of the nation was 
decided by the direct vote of the people, as follows : — 

439,742 



Total registration 




Did not vote, 


108,512 


Votes rejected. 


2,403 


Voted for republic, 


69,264 


Voted for monarchy. 


259,563 



439,742 

The same month (November, 1905), the throne of 
Norway was formally offered at Copenhagen by a 
deputation from the Norwegian Parliament, to Prince 
Karl of Denmark, second son of H. M. Frederick 
VIII, grandson of H. M. Christian IX, then the 
reigning monarch of that country. 

The aged King Christian made the speech of ac- 
ceptance, as follows: — 

. ''Representatives of the men of Norway : It has 
pleased us to accede to the desire of the Norwegian 
people that we accept the ancient crown of Norway 
for our dear grandson. Prince Charles. We cherish 
full confidence that the Norwegian people, in common 
with him, have a happy future in store for them. 

"The young King does not come as a stranger to 
Norway, for he claims relationship to former Nor- 
wegian kings. Nor will the kingdom of Norway 
be strange to him, for everywhere in the land com- 
mon recollections of the history of the kingdom and 
the history of his race will meet him. 



266 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

"It is our hope that the ties which even now unite 
the young King to the old land and people may be 
more firmly knit by the cooperation of the King and 
people for the welfare of the land and its future, and 
it is our belief that thereby not only will the welfare 
of the Norwegian people be furthered, but also the 
welfare of their kinsmen. 

"We pray Almighty God that this step may bring 
happiness and blessing to the whole North, and that 
unity, peace and concord may increase between the 
two nations." . . . 

Turning to the new King and Queen, King Christ- 
ian said : — 

"To you, my dear grandchildren, I address myself 
with the hope that God may lend you power and 
strength to serve your country and people with 
fidelity and rectitude. In this way you will win for 
yourselves the love of your people, and will feel your- 
selves Norwegians in your work for the happiness 
and future of your country. . . . 

"Go with God, my dear grandchildren, from the 
land and race that bore you, to the land and people 
which have called you, and take the blessing of your 
old King for you, your line, and your deeds now and 
forever." 

The new monarch took the name of Haakon VII, 
and gave the infant prince the name of Olaf, thus 
indicating his desire to impress upon the Norwegian 
people his realization of the fact that the ancient or- 
der of things was to be restored — that the independ- 
ent Norway of the Haakons and Olafs of old was 
again to be a reality. 

Upon his arrival at Christiania, on November 25, 
King Haakon was formally welcomed by the city of- 
ficials and most enthusiastically cheered by thousands 
upon thousands of citizens as he drove with Queen 
Maud and the little prince to the palace. 

Two days -later, November 27, 1905, the Parliament 
building was filled with a distinguished assemblage, 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 267 

besides the members of the Storthing, all in gala at- 
tire, to witness the ceremony of the king's taking the 
oath to the Constitution. 

At 12 o'clock a gavel fell; there was immediate 
silence, whereupon the President declared the 
Storthing in session. In a moment the royal pro- 
cession appeared, the King in the uniform of a Nor- 
wegian general, and the Queen in white, with a col- 
lar of ermine, and a diadem and necklace of gleaming 
diamonds. The King was accompanied by the Lord 
Steward and two adjutants, the Queen by two ladies- 
in-waiting. The cabinet stood in a semi-circle at the 
right of the throne. 

When all were in position, the President's clean- 
cut words fell upon the intent ears of the solemn 
assemblage : — 

"Your Majesties! The Storthing, as the repre- 
sentative of the Norwegian people, salutes the King 
and Queen of Norway, and bids them welcome! By 
virtue of the unanimous choice of the Storthing and 
the sanction of the Norwegian people. Your Majesty 
has ascended the throne of Norway. But in order 
that Your Majesty shall be empowered to exercise the 
authority which the Constitution confers upon the 
king, Your Majesty is required to take the oath to 
the Constitution, as this document prescribes. And 
it is my duty to request Your Majesty to take this 
oath." 

Premier Michelsen stepped forward and handed the 
King a document, whereupon the King, with his right 
hand raised, and with firm voice, pronounced the fol- 
lowing oath: — 

"I solemnly promise to govern the kingdom of 
Norway in accordance with its Constitution and 
statutes, so help me God and His Holy Writ !" 

Almost immediately, as a solemn echo, the thunder 
of the guns at the Fortress of Akershus was heard. 



268 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Again the President spoke: — 

"After having taken this oath to the Constitution, 
Your Majesty has entered into the full possession of 
the rights which the Constitution grants the king. 
Upon the occasion of your Majesty's acceptance of 
election as King of Norway, Your Majesty declared 
your intention to assume the name of Haakon VII. 
That name has a pleasant ring to Norwegian ears. It 
awakens memories of great names in our history. We 
see in it an omen that the reign of Your Majesty will 
inaugurate an era of happiness for our country. 

" 'Everything for Norway' is the motto that Your 
Majesty has chosen. That points out the great mis- 
sion that is to unite us all. In the positive assurance 
that Your Majesty will join with the Norwegian peo- 
ple in faithful cooperation — a condition that is neces- 
sary in order to enable both king and people to con- 
tribute to the full measure of their powers toward 
the welfare and happiness of the country — in assur- 
ance of this, I bid all to unite in the expression of the 
wish : God bless and keep the King of Norway !" 

The members of the Storthing repeated the words. 
Thereupon the King responded as follows: — 

"Mr. President ! Representatives ! Before leaving 
this place, after this solemn ceremony, I salute the 
members of the Storthing, representatives of the free 
people of Norway. We all know the high and honor- 
able position that the Storthing occupies in the Con- 
stitution of Norway and in the hearts of Norwegians. 
In days of seriousness and in days of rejoicing, the 
Norwegian people have stood back of the Storthing, 
It shall be my greatest pleasure, in cooperation with 
the Storthing and in conformity with the Constitu- 
tion, to devote my powers to serving the nation — ^to 
promoting its peace and happiness. God bless the 
Fatherland !" 

The members of the Storthing repeated this last 
invocation, and the impressive ceremony was at an 
end. 



THE RULERS OF NORWAY 269 

Thus it was that this nation of 2,239,880 free people 
made the beginning of a new era in Scandinavian 
histor}^ A British writer observed at the time: "For 
the last hundred years she (Norway) has been fast 
overtaking her neighbors in culture and liberalism. 
Her political renaissance found its inspiration in her 
literary renaissance, from the days of Wergeland to 
those of Bjornson. . . . The spirit that has inspired 
her . . . ought to be a guarantee that she will jealously 
guard her freedom." 



One would suppose that King Haakon might now 
go about the work of ruling the realm without any 
further ado. But there is a paragraph in the Nor- 
wegian Constitution on the ceremony of coronation. 
It stipulates that the coronation must take place in the 
cathedral at Trondhjem, but it does not declare that 
there must be a coronation. The Constitution leaves 
it to the king to determine the details of the cere- 
mony, as well as the time, thus, by implication, leav- 
ing it for him to decide whether there shall be a 
coronation at all or not. Karl Johan was crowned 
at Trondhjem in 1818, Karl XV in 1860, and Oscar 
II in 1873 ; but Karl XIII, who was the reigning 
sovereign in Sweden when Norway entered the union 
(1814), was not crowned as King of Norway, nor 
was Oscar I, who ascended the throne in 1844. 

Haakon VII decided in favor of a coronation, and 
the people, as a whole, were glad of it, as it gave 
them another opportunity to impress upon the world 
the fact that they had a king of their own. Moreover, 
it also gave them a welcome opportunity to call 
conspicuous attention to their ancient seat of gov- 
ernment and its beautiful and venerable cathedral. 
The coronation took place on June 24, 1906, in the 
presence of the most distinguished assemblage that 



270 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

has ever gathered in Norway. There were present 
royal personages from England, Germany, Russia and 
Denmark. 



The Land And the Sky 

The Scandinavian peninsula, of which Norway is 
the outer or western half, consists largely of granite, 
gneiss and other very ancient rocks, comparatively 
little changed since they were first formed by the 
cooling of the earth's molten stuff aeons ago. Espe- 
cially in the Romsdal (valley of the Rauma river) 
the ancient gneiss takes magnificently picturesque 
forms, towering a mile high above the river. (See 
e. g., Position 89.) Sedimentary rocks belonging to 
the Silurian period cover a large area around Christ- 
iania Fjord in southeastern Norway. In the interior 
of the country, sparagmite, quartzite, schists, sand- 
stones and limestones often appear overlying the 
more ancient formations. 

Southern Norway is comparatively low, though 
almost everywhere broken by hills. (See Kongsberg, 
at Position 14.) From the south and east the land 
rises more and more, until along the west and north- 
west coast it forms a vast, elevated plateau, broken 
into innumerable ragged remnants, where it comes to 
a precipitous end, facing the North Atlantic. (See 
the Folgefond, Position 36; the mountains behind 
Marok, Position 86; the walls above Lyngenfjord, 
Position 98; the North Cape, Position 99.) This 
being the case, of course the only room for long river val- 
leys is toward the eastern part of Norway, the val- 
leys dipping southward. Engineers have taken ad- 
vantage of Norway's one really long valley — that of 
the Glommen river, 400 miles, utilizing it as the 
route for the kingdom's principal railway. (Refer to 
Transportation, page 301.) 



272 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Geological airthorities are agreed that there has 
been a decided change of the coast-linee in Norway 
during the period of human habitation. In a recent 
work* (1905) Professor W. C. Brogger of the Uni- 
versity of Christiania has shown that at the close of 
the older stone age in Norway (about 7,000 years 
ago) the coast-line at Christiania was about 225 feet 
lower than it is at present. In other words, the land 
has been rising at the rate of about three feet per 
century. These investigations are of great interest, 
for it is the careful observations in the change of the 
coast-lines in connection with the finds of stone im- 
plements along the various levels that has made it 
possible to estimate the antiquity of man in Norway. 

In a prehistoric age the whole of Norway was cov- 
ered by glaciers. It has been stated on good authority 
that the extraordinary ploughing and rending of the 
western coast was the work of almost inconceivably 
heavy masses of glacial ice, grinding and tearing their 
way to the sea. Other authorities disbelieve that 
glacial ice alone was responsible for the deep-cut 
fjords and the chopped-up fringe of islands that make 
Norway's sea-coast so extraordinarily disproportionate 
to her main area. (See map 2.) Of Norway's 
123,000 square miles, 8,600 miles are in those fringing 
"skerries" or outlying islands, which act now like 
breakwaters to protect the coast proper from the 
greatest force of Atlantic storms. One fact certainly 
difficult of explanation according to the theory of 
glacial cutting is that the great, torn inlets known as 
fjords are in several cases deeper than the ocean just 
off-shore. The Sogne fjord, for example, whose long, 
crooked cleft reaches away up one hundred miles into 



*StrandUnjens Beliggenhed under Stenalderen. 



. THE LAND AND THE SKY 273 

the heart of the country, is in some places over 4,000 
feet deep. Some Norwegian geologists have, how- 
ever, a plausible explanation of the great depth of 
the fjords. They believe that before the Great Ice 
Age the beds of the fjords were canon-like river beds, 
made so by erosion, and that later the glacial ice 
broadened rather than deepened these beds. The sink- 
ing of the land at this early time, of which there is 
geological evidence, permitted the sea to fill these 
broadened canons, thus making fjords. 

One particularly interesting thing about Norway is 
the fact that certain of her high table-lands are still 
covered with glacial ice, its masses continually slid- 
ing down to lower levels as the lowermost portions 
melt. (See, for instance, the Hardanger glacier. 
Position 47.) And, of course, in a land where 
great ice masses are melting every summer, and where 
the rainfall is heavy besides, vast volumes of water 
are continually descending to run off into the sea. 
This means that the mountain regions of Norway 
show the traveler an amazing number of superb 
waterfalls. (Rjukan Fos, Position 20, and others.) 

The fact that glaciers and mountain torrents are 
so much in evidence in Norway, makes the country 
especially interesting to travelers, who like to see 
with their own eyes the way our habitable earth was 
made. The very process of creation may still be 
watched in Norway. One can see for himself how the 
accumulating snows get compacted into solid ice 
(Brigsdal, at Position 74) — how the ice rasps and 
grinds its way downward, tearing fragments off the 
rocks and carrying the debris down into the valleys 
(Brigsdal, at Positions 72-73). One can see how 
the mountain streams work like water-mills, wearing 
the broken rocks smaller and smaller and grinding 



274 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

them against each other (Skarsfos, Position 38, and 
also Skjeggedalsfos at Position 42). The contributory 
work of avalanches or landslides can be noted, 
too, scraping accumulations of loose rocks from 
mountainsides and throwing them down into the 
valleys. (See Espelandsfos at Position 37, and the 
road above Gudvangen, in the Nserodal, at Position 
58.) One finds over and over again those marvellous 
primitive organisms, the lichens and mosses, eating 
at the surface of the rocks, dissolving and digesting 
their mineral substance and making it ready for the 
food of higher orders of plants and of animals (e. g., 
at Botten, Position 27; along the Bratlandsdal 
road. Position 35; or beside the Nserofjord be- 
low Gudvangen, Position 60). And in all sorts 
of places on the lower levels one finds spread out be- 
fore his eyes the slowly accumulated gravel and sedi- 
ment from centuries and ages of ice-and-water action, 
forming fields, fertile under the long summer day's 
sunshine. (Roldal, Position 32; Odde, Position 39; 
Hogrenning farm. Position 79.) 

The actual area of such cultivable land is after all 
only about 3 per cent, of the total area of the country, 
3,500 square miles in all. Twenty-two per cent, of 
the country is forest-covered, 75 per cent, consists of 
high, barren heaths in the interior (e. g., the Hardan- 
ger Vidda, Position 45), or lofty, bare cliffs (see 
North Cape, Position 99), or sheets of glacial ice (see 
Grytereids glacier. Position 67). 

The southernmost land in Norway is in latitude 58°. 
The northernmost land — indeed the most far-north 
point in all Europe — is the North Cape, latitude 71° 
6' 45" (Position 99). Yet, for all that, the har- 
bors on the west coast are not ice-bound. Warm 
ocean currents sweep so near the shore that even 



THE LAND AND THE SKY 2tD 

away up at Trondhjem, 63° 30', the river Nid seldom 
freezes, and the harbor never freezes at all. 

The west coast is a district of heavy and long-con- 
tinued rains; fogs are also common. But when the 
sun does get a chance to shine, it does its good work 
with a persistence surprising to people accustomed to 
lower latitudes. In the latter part of June the sun 
rises about 2 :30 A. M. on the market gardens around 
Christiania, and does not set till about half-past nine 
in the evening. The same is true at Bergen, where 
the longest day lasts nineteen hours; but Bergen is 
famous for its rainy weather, so the fields do not get 
all the good they might out of the long-continued 
daylight. Of course, as one goes farther and farther 
north in midsummer, while the earth's northern pole 
is tilted toward the sun, the longer the time the sun 
stays above the horizon each day. At Trondhjem the 
longest summer day has twenty-one hours. At Trom- 
so in clear weather the sun does not go entirely out 
of sight below the horizon for two whole months; i. 
e., from the 18th of May to the 25th of July. At 
Hammerfest, it stays in sight from May 13th to July 
29th. At the North Cape, provided the weather were 
clear (it seldom is so!) the sun would be in sight 
day and night, from the 11th of May to the 1st of 
August. Highest in the south at noon and lowest 
in the north at midnight, it does not actually swing 
below the horizon at all, but circles obliquely around 
and around the heavens. (See Position 100.) 

The effect of the extreme length of the summer 
days in Norway is noticeable in forcing rapid and 
luxuriant growth of grains and field vegetables, as 
well as profuse leafage on the deciduous trees. Three 
months of nearly continuous sunlight seem to be 
almost equivalent to a lower latitude. Wheat and rye 
have sometimes been found to grow two inches in a 



276 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

single day. We ourselves can see a good crop of bar- 
ley being harvested (at Position 66), in Olden Val- 
ley, almost as far north as Iceland. As a matter of 
fact it can be successfully raised for up within the 
Arctic circle. Potatoes are not uncommon beyond 
Trondhjem. 

Pines, spruces and kindred cone-bearing trees are 
most common on the Norwegian hills (see Position 
1), but oaks, elms, beeches and birches are also plenti- 
ful. See the bouquets of thick foliage in the valley 
alongside the Rauma river ( at Position 89 ) , in latitude 
62° 30'; beautiful tree hedges at Trondhjem (see 
Position 91) in latitude 63° 30', notice also trees in a 
pretty little public park away beyond the Arctic Circle 
(Position 95) at Tromso, in latitude 69° 38'. We 
shall find thrifty looking shrubs even farther still 
toward the Pole (at Position 98), as we sail through 
the Lyngenfjord on our trip to the North Cape. 

Apples, cherries and a variety of small-fruits are 
raised as far north as Trondhjem. Wild strawberries, 
raspberries and bilberries are often found still farther 
north than that. In the vicinity of Bergen the flower- 
gardens are famous for their luxuriance, and roses 
flourish beside the hotel at Odde. 

The length of Norway's midsummer days is, of 
course, balanced astronomically by the length of her 
winter nights. At Christmas time in Christiania, the 
sun is above the horizon only about five hours. In 
Tromso on a winter's day the sun may not rise until 
ten in the forenoon, setting again by two in the after- 
noon. At Hammerfest the sun omits to look over 
the horizon for three months at a stretch. That used 
to be a more serious hardship than it is now. Electric 
lights have recently been introduced into the town 
to mitigate the depressing effect of the continuous 
darkness. 



THE LAXD AND THE SKY Z U 

The conditions of the country as regards winter 
temperature are rather unusual. For reasons not en- 
tirely understood even by scientists, the average Janu- 
ary temperature is about 23° in Christiania and Ham- 
merfest alike, though the latter town is more than 
seven hundred miles farther north. A winter in the 
Lofoten Islands would not be likely to be any colder 
than a winter in southern Denmark, Farther in from 
the coast, on the high table-lands of the interior, it is 
naturally very much colder. 

The animal inhabitants of the kingdom are, in 
general, such as are found in other parts of northern 
Europe — foxes, wolves and bears are still found; a 
peculiar little creature, the lemming, which looks like 
a rat, is numerous in certain districts. Elk and deer 
are becoming rare. The most interesting of Nor- 
way's wild creatures is, by all odds, the reindeer. 
Tourists making the trip to the North Cape nearly 
always visit certain Lapp settlements (at Position 
96), near Tromso, where the animals are semi-do- 
mesticated and kept like cattle for their milk, hides 
and flesh, as well as being used for draught-animals. 
It is, however, very seldom that travelers go so far 
enough off the beaten routes to see herds of wild 
reindeer, that have never been touched by a human 
hand (Position 45). 

The Norse wild-fowl most interesting to hunters are 
the capercailzie (Tiur in Norwegian), ptarmigan and 
grouse. Eider-ducks — furnishing the valuable "down" 
of commerce — are numerous in very high latitudes, 
chiefly within the Arctic Circle. The islands and 
fjord-shores along the northwest coast abound in 
wild-geese and ducks, petrels, pelicans, swans, grabes, 
auks, gulls, curlews, and other fowl of the same 
orders. 



THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE 

From a linguistic standpoint, the Norwegians, like 
the other Scandinavians, belong to the Aryan group. 
Racially, however, the Scandinavians have some well- 
defined characteristics that make it impossible from 
an anthropological point of view to put them in the 
same class with the darker types of many other parts 
of Europe. Among the historical races of Europe — 
the Aryan-speaking peoples — there are at least three 
distinct race types : the blonde long-heads, the brunette 
broad-heads, and the brunette long-heads. 

Forty years ago the origin of the historical races of 
Europe seemed to most scholars to have been defi- 
nitely settled. It was believed that they came from 
Asia during the period of Aryan migration — possibly 
1,500 years before the Christian era — and that they all 
belonged to the same race — the Aryan race. During 
the last two decades, however, that theory has been 
abandoned by modern scholars, as the result of most 
searching and exhaustive investigation. It does not 
come within the province of this chapter to enter into 
the details of this long and complicated controversy; 
we can only give some of the general conclusions. 
Thus, for example, in the opinion of one of the most 
competent scientists of the nineteenth century, the 
late Thomas H. Huxley, the three principal race types 
of Europe are European types — not Asiatic. In the 
revised edition of his works, published in 1896, he 
maintains that the evidence on the question is con- 
sistent with the supposition that the three race types 
referred to above "have existed in Europe through- 



THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE 279 

out historic times, and very far back into prehistoric 
times." And he adds: "There is no proof of any 
migration of Asiatics into Europe west of the Dnieper 
down to the time of Attila (fourth century, A. D.)" 

Many other authorities, equally eminent, might be 
quoted. For references, see chapter on Books to 
Read. 

In a word, modern science has entirely upset our 
school-book theories on the origin of the European 
races; nor does it sanction the supposition that the 
Scandinavians were the tail-end of a Teutonic pro- 
cession, switched off into Scandinavia as this pro- 
cession came to a halt in central Europe after its long 
march from the highlands of Asia. On the con- 
trary, modern investigation has made it possible to 
contend with much force that Scandinavia even in 
prehistoric times (as later, during the Viking Age) 
was, as Jornandes, the Gothic historian of the sixth 
century, A. D., says, oificina gentium, vagina nationum 
(the source of races, the mother of nations) — that the 
prehistoric Scandinavians, Hke their descendants the 
Vikings, were a prolific and conquering race, forced, 
possibly by over-population and a restless spirit of 
adventure, out of their northern homes, and that every 
country in Europe has, at one time or another, re- 
ceived such a fructifying stream of emigration from 
the Scandinavian North as has flowed over the broad 
prairies of the United States and Canada. 

Modern scholarship and research have made it pos- 
sible to go farther, and contend that Scandinavia was 
the cradle of the Aryans. In 1886 a very notable 
book making this contention was published by the 
Austrian scholar, Dr. Karl Penka. It attracted a 
great deal of attention. A number of noted English 
scholars wrote articles on the book, among them, Mr. 



280 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Huxley and Professors Sayce and Rhys of Oxford ; all 
were profoundly impressed by Dr. Penka's argument. 
Professor Sayce had long been one of the most 
ardent defenders of the Asiatic theory. But in 1889, 
after a careful study of Penka's book, he wrote : — 

''This hypothesis that southern Scandinavia 
was the primitive Aryan home seems to me to 
have more in its favor than any other hypothesis 
on the subject yet put forward. It has the 
countenance of history. Scandinavia, even be- 
fore the sixth century, was characterized as 'the 
manufactory of nations,' and the voyages and set- 
tlements of the Norse Vikings offer an historical 
illustration of what the prehistoric migrations 
and settlements of the speakers of the [primitive] 
Indo-European language must have been. . . . 
The Norse migrations in later times were even 
more extensive, and what the Norse Vikings 
were able to achieve, could have been achieved by 
their ancestors centuries before." 

In fact, a startling argument may be made for 
Scandinavia as the primitive home of the Ayrans. 
This argument is largely based, not on historical 
analogue, as indicated in the extract from Professor 
Sayce, but on investigations in the comparatively new 
fields of archaeology and anthropology. It must be 
said, however, that the Aryan question has no longer 
the importance that it had a decade ago. Such a thing 
as an original Aryan race from which the historical 
races of Europe (and some of Asia) sprang, has be- 
come more and more remote as the discussion of the 
question has proceeded. All that we can now legiti- 
mately suppose is that, in the neolithic or stone age, 
the Inhabitants of Europe were Aryanized from the 
point of view of language. Although no absolutely 
definite knowledge as to whence this linguistic trans- 
formation came is likely ever to be reached, the 



THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE 281 

Aryan discussion of the last two decades has served 
to emphasize the antiquity of Scandinavia and to ac- 
cord a large measure of general historical importance 
to the early migrations of its primitive inhabitants. 

But as this is a Scandinavian, rather than a Nor- 
wegian question, we shall have to leave it with these 
general observations : — 

Scandinavia was not fit for human habitation dur- 
ing the Great Ice Age. According to competent geol- 
ogists, the glacial ice disappeared from Denmark, 
southern Sweden and southern Norway about 18,000 
years ago. And Oscar Montelius, the greatest 
archaeologist of Sweden, thinks it highly probable that 
the Scandinavian countries became inhabited not long 
after that time.* Denmark and southern Sweden were 
inhabited earlier than southern Norway. There seems 
to have been an expansion in every direction from 
the ''Baltic hive." 

If now the question be asked: Whence came the 
first settlers in this Baltic center? the answer must, in 
view of the remoteness of the epoch and our lack of 
adequate knowledge of it, be a theoretical one. Penka's 
theory that the progenitors of the Scandinavians 
came from central Europe with the reindeer, which 
wandered north with the receding ice-sheet, is a fair 
working hypothesis. Archaeologists recognize that 
there was a Reindeer Age in Europe at that time, 
and that man lived there at that time, for reindeer 
horns have been found with carvings of the rein- 
deer upon them. We also know something of the 
race-type of this period, for a number of skulls have 
been found. And the striking thing with regard to 
the most ancient of these skulls is that they are of 



♦See Nordish Tidsskrift, 1906. p. 230, for a review of Professor Brog- 
gST'z book Sandlinjens Belii^genhed under Stenald^ren. 



282 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

the dolichocephalic (long-headed) type, which is the 
characteristic Scandinavian type. Here, then, is an 
indication that the type of race represented by the 
famous Neanderthal skull of Germany may be the 
source of the Scandinavian race. That type of race 
belongs to a very remote past, and yet Huxley, in 
Man's Place in Nature, says "there is evidence of 
physiological continuity of the blond long-heads (the 
Scandinavian type) with the oldest type of skull 
found in Europe." 

For the average reader, who may not feel disposed 
to discuss ''skulls," the question of the antiquity of 
the Scandinavians may be put as follows: — 

The racial existence of the Scandinavians far ante- 
dates the first beginnings of Athens and Rome. They 
have maintained their identity as a race to the pres- 
ent from time immemorial. They have clung to their 
own soil for ages, in the literal sense of that term, 
and have on this soil developed out of most primitive 
conditions. Here they gradually evolved, or at any 
rate maintained, that race type characteristic of Scan- 
dinavia — the tall, blue-eyed, dolichocephalic blonde, 
whose original home can be traced to no other part 
of the globe. 

The proof of this lies mainly in the fact that dur- 
ing the latter part of the Stone Age, a tract of coun- 
try, including Denmark, southern Sweden, southern Nor- 
way and northern Germany, furnishes richer and more 
beautiful relics of stone implements (and later of bronze) 
than any other part of Europe. Furthermore, the large 
majority of the skulls that have been found in the 
burial mounds and passage-graves of these archaeologi- 
cal periods coincide with the type of the historical 
period. 

The wonderful power of expansion of this blonde 
race during prehistoric times has already been re- 



THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE 283 

ferred to. The influence of this expansion during pre- 
historic times and during the Viking Age marks it 
as one of the great historic races of Europe — the one, 
possibly, which has contributed to European civiHza- 
tion those elements which have made it distinct from 
the civilization of the Orient. 

Turning now to Norway, we may remark that dur- 
ing the early archaeological ages Norway was much 
more sparsely settled than southern Sweden and Den- 
mark. Professor Brogger's investigations show that 
Norway was inhabited more than 5,000 years before 
the Christian era. And there is no valid reason for 
believing that the first settlers were not ancestors of 
the race that appeared on the scene of historic action 
during the Viking Age. There is absolutely no 
ground, on the other hand, for the old theory that 
Norway was first inhabited by a race of Lapps or 
Finns. 

The preceding discussion will have shown that the 
Norsemen are the immediate kinsmen of the Swedes 
and Danes. They are also closely allied with the Ger- 
mans, the Dutch and Britons of Anglo-Saxon descent.* 

Census returns show Norway as having nearly 
65,000 more women than men in her population. This 
fact can be largely, if not entirely, accounted for by 
two facts. (1) The extent of the fishing industries 
along the northwest coast, in which numerous lives 
are lost every year, thus abnormally increasing the 
number of fishermen's widows. (2) The continual 
stream of emigration to other lands, the greater num- 
ber of emigrants being men. 

The Norwegians are, as a people, incHned to demo- 
cratic simplicity, and to independence in their personal 
activities. Life on lonely farms or in very small, 



* This chapter, up to this point, is the work of the Editor. 



284 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

isolated hamlets, has bred in them the habit of man- 
aging their own affairs. It has also produced, as a 
lonely life is apt to do, a certain reserve in their man- 
ner towards strangers. At the same time they are 
genuinely hospitable at heart, for life close to the soil 
and familiarity with all the^ elemental needs and hard- 
ships of daily existence make them ready to lend a 
hand when another is in need of friendly service. 

The average Norwegian has a good mind, and the 
education he has received in the public schools tends 
to give him confidence in using it. He reads, and is 
fond of discussing social and political problems. Free- 
dom of speech and freedom of the press are rights 
jealously cherished." 

A generation or so ago there was a good deal of 
mutual distrust between city and country people — the 
natural result of circumstances in a land where travel 
was especially difficult, preventing town-dwellers and 
farmers from seeing or knowing much of each other, 
and keeping their ways of doing things very different. 
Under the present conditions of readier communica- 
tion, people are better acquainted, and the sensitive 
pride of a countryman is no longer in such danger of 
being hurt when he comes down to Christiania, where 
the standards are those of the Continental cities. 

Both in the towns and in farming communities, 
there is a lively appreciation of worldly prosperity. 
People are quick to ask, "What did that cost?" In 
the towns this is readily accounted for just as in other 
urban centers, where living continually tends toward 
greater elaboration and competitive display. On re- 
mote farms, it grows out of a keen realization of the 
wearisome toil required to wring out of the thin soil 
of little mountain-walled fields anything more than 
the barest necessities of life. Farm buildings, broad- 



THE NORWEGIAN PEOPLE 285 

cloth coats, silver and linen and bank-accounts stand 
for such long hours, weeks and years of back-break- 
ing labor, that it is only natural they should be valued 
in proportion to their immense costliness. It is not 
at all surprising, when one comes to think of it, that 
a strong love of property should often be conspicu- 
ous among dwellers in the farming provinces. 

Love of country is a sturdily aggressive quality in 
the Norsemen of to-day, as it has been all through the 
centuries. The fact that the people are more given 
to emigration than any other Europeans, except the 
Irish, does not disprove this statement. Norwegians 
do emigrate in remarkably large numbers (chiefly to 
the United States of America; see Position 2), be- 
cause the slender physical resources of the home-land 
are actually insufficient to yield everybody a Hving, 
and they desire their children to have increasing 
opportunities. 

But no people in the world are more heartily in 
love with the land of their birth. As somebody has 
wisely explained, loyalty to a new flag is perfectly 
consistent with loyalty to the old soil. A man's love 
for his wife need not lessen love for the mother who 
bore him. And those who do spend their lives on the 
native soil are full of affectionate faith in Norway's 
destiny, as they are proud of her heroic and pic- 
ttiresque past. 



THM LAPPS 

The Lapps are racially different from the Norse- 
men. They come not from Aryan, but from a Ugro- 
Finnic or Turanian branch of the Mongoloid stock, 
and (save where members have intermarried with 
Norwegians) are a separate people, somewhat as the 
American Indians are separate from the white people 
of the United States. The Lapps are often spoken of 
as the aborigines of Scandinavia, but modern scholar- 
ship has entirely discredited this. (See preceding 
chapter.) They have a vague tradition that in some 
prehistoric period their ancestors came *'from the 
east,^' i. e., probably from Siberia or North Central 
Asia. At present the Lapp population within the king- 
dom of Norway is about 20,000. Half as many again 
(37,000) live in northern Sweden, and others of the 
same blood make their homes in Finland and Russia. 

These people call themselves Same. The name 
**Lapp" comes from the Finnish word lappaan, mean- 
ing to move from place to place. From time im- 
memorial the people have been nomads — here at one 
season of the year — there at another season, changing 
their location largely in accordance with the needs 
iof the herds of reindeer, their chief^resource for sub- 
sistance. At the present time the larger part of the 
20,000 Lapps in Norway have practically abandoned 
the roving habits of their ancestors, and make 
permanent or semi-permanent homes. Some have 
adopted fishing as a means of livelihood; some have 
gone into systematic stock-raising; not so many take 
to farming. 



THE LAPPS 287 

Those who live all or part of the year near Nor- 
wegian towns or villages, share in the education and 
religious privileges of the Norwegian population. 
Their children go to school, and become as well edu- 
cated as other country children. They are instructed 
in the (Lutheran) church catechism and duly con- 
firmed in the established faith. As a rule, the people 
are punctiliously observant of religious obligations, 
calling on some ordained priest to perform marriage 
and burial services. Their profession of Christianity 
is, however, of comparatively brief standing. Until 
about two centuries ago, when missionaries began to 
work for their conversion, they had a picturesque 
pagan faith of their own, including a belief in im- 
mortality, the future life being practically very much 
like life here on earth. 

Many Lapps are now distinctly thrifty and pros- 
perous, with homes quite comfortably equipped, and 
capital accumulating in savings banks. A few emi- 
grate to America. 

The Lapps are physically very different from Nor- 
wegians. They are much shorter in stature (less than 
five feet tall), with darker hair, higher cheek-bones, 
and a lower, more slanting forehead — (what anthro- 
pologists call a brachycephalous type). 

Besides the Lapps there is another Ugro-Finnic 
element in the population of Norway, the Ouanes 
(Norwegian kvcener). They are immigrants from 
Finland, and are racially and linguistically akin to the 
Lapps, but are physically somewhat larger. A few 
hundred of them settled in certain parts of southern 
Norway about the year 1600. Anthropologically this 
Finnish element is still recognizable, but their lan- 
guage has almost disappeared. During the early part 
of the eighteenth century, and especially during the 



288 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

middle of the nineteenth century, large numbers 
(about 10,000) of these people settled in the northern 
provinces of Norway, having deserted their native 
heath in northern Finland during times of war and 
famine. 

The correct name for the original Ugro-Finnic pop- 
ulation of northern Norway is Finns. They were so 
called by Ohthere, a Norseman, who told Alfred the 
Great about these people. The Finns of Norway 
consider the word Lapp a term of reproach. In 
Sweden, the term Lapp is invariably used to desig- 
nate these hyperboreans, while the term Finn is ap- 
plied only to the inhabitants of Finland. In order to 
avoid confusion the designation Lapp is becoming 
more common in Norway. 



Education 

In respect to the education of her people, Norway 
stands with the foremost nations of the world. Almost 
every Norwegian of either sex can read and write, 
and, especially in the larger towns, there are highly 
educated and cultivated people, well-read and ac- 
complished, such as one would find in any modern 
European center. 

Elementary education is practically compulsory, and 
parents have no fees to pay for instruction during the 
first seven years of a child's attendance at the public 
schools. In the towns such schools are well graded. 
In country districts they are like the ungraded coun- 
try schools in the less-favored parts of the United 
States. Formerly the country teacher conducted 
classes for a few weeks in one farmhouse and then 
moved on to another district for the following term; 
this ''ambulatory" method has now almost entirely 
vanished. A part of the expense is borne by the gen- 
eral government, and a part by the amt (canton or 
county). In 1901 there were enrolled in Norwegian 
public schools 342,579 children, for whose instruc- 
tion $3,264,975 were expended, that is to say, an an- 
nual average of more than $9.50 per pupil. It is evi- 
dent that Norway makes an extraordinary effort, in 
proportion to her resources, in order to raise an in- 
telligent people. The instruction provided in the 
smaller country schools is only rudimentary, and by 
no means ideal, but in the few larsre towns the cur- 



290 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

riculum compares well with that of similar grades in 
Other parts of Europe and America. 

The elementary schools (for pupils less than eleven 
years old) are, as stated above, entirely free. The 
"Middle" schools (eleven to fifteen years), require 
very small tuition fees. In most of the Middle schools 
the course of study includes English, as well as the 
language of the country, history, geography, mathe- 
matics, natural sciences, religion, writing, and draw- 
ing, manual training, gymnastics, singing and domes- 
tic economy. 

Poor children, at least in the towns, have school- 
books furnished free, and in Christiania those whose 
parents are unable to provide for them properly are 
given one good meal of simple, nourishing food, in 
order to put them in good physical condition for their 
work. 

The educational problem of the kingdom is much 
simplified by the fact that school, church and society 
all pull together. (1) Norway is practically unani- 
mous in loyalty to the established Church (Lutheran 
Protestant). (2) The Church requires every boy 
and girl to pass strict examinations in Christian doc- 
trine and Bible history preparatory to "confirmation." 
That involves at least fair facility in reading and writ- 
ing. (3) It is absolutely essential that a youth or 
a maiden should hold a certificate of confirmation, in 
order to obtain a good wage-earning position under 
the government, in business, often even in domestic 
service. 

College-preparatory schools (gymnasia) are 86 in 
number, with 15,596 pupils. Their course of study 
divides along two lines, according to whether pupils 
are to emphasize the sciences or language and history. 
German, French and English are taught in these 



PUBLIC EDUCATION 291 

schools; Greek has been entirely dropped from the 
course (since 1896) and Latin is a possible elective 
only during the two last years, an indication that 
even the old so-called "Latin'' schools have been thor- 
oughly democratized in accordance with the modern 
spirit of the people. Outside the large towns students 
of high school age (fifteen to eighteen) often secure 
special instruction from some clergyman; the clergy 
of the established Church are all university men, well 
trained. 

The University at Christiania has an average en- 
rollment of over 1,400 students. It is a State institu- 
tion, receiving government subsidies, which amount 
to nearly a quarter of a million dollars yearly, besides 
the modest fees of the students themselves. The sixty- 
three professors are appointed by the King. 

There are six public normal schools and four private 
institutions of the same grade, where teachers are 
trained for work in the elementary grades. Summer 
schools for teachers are held at Christiania and Ber- 
gen. Teachers' salaries are very small, averaging less 
than $300, but masters have a house besides, and often 
act as parish-clerks. Retired schoolmasters or their 
widows receive modest pensions from the State. 

Technical schools, for the study of engineering, 
chemistry and allied subjects, are supported in Christ- 
iania, Bergen and Trondhjem. Christiania has also 
an art academy and a good music school. 

In several of the larger towns evening schools are 
supported for the benefit of boys and girls who have 
to work during the day, yet are ambitious to carry 
on their studies beyond the limits actually demanded 
by law. Similar night schools, with a broader cur- 
riculum, are carried on for adults. They are known 
as arheiderakademier (workmen's academies), and are 



292 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

managed on the plan known in America as the "Uni- 
versity Extension" method, i. e., lectures are given by 
college professors, doctors, military officers, engineers, 
chemists and other scientific men. 

The State supports wholly or partially ten schools 
for abnormal children, deaf, blind and feeble-minded, 
also special reformatory institutions for neglected 
children, who must have special care to keep them 
from developing into criminals. 

The State annually appropriates $5,400 towards the 
support of public libraries in different parts of the 
country. This amount is distributed in sums not 
more than $54 each in parishes where an equal amount 
is raised by local subscription. Christiania has a pub- 
lic library of 50,000 volumes and Bergen a collection 
larger still. 



Religion 

Less than a thousand years ago the Norse people 
were brought up, one generation after another, in a 
pagan religion. It was a poetic and picturesque 
faith, just such as one might expect to find taking 
shape among a vigorous, energetic people, whose life 
was spent in sturdy hand-to-hand battling with wind 
and wave, storm and cold, to wrest a living from earth 
and sea. Some mythologists think that the ancient 
Norse ideas of overruling Powers grew simply out of 
their observations of Nature and life-experience — the 
stormy seas, the thunder-cloud, the wind, the benefi- 
cent sun, the inward conflicts of impulse and con- 
science ; other scholars believe that some of their ideas 
(especially their conceptions of Odin and Balder) 
grew out of classical and Christian traditions acquired 
through contact with the people of the British Isles 
during the Viking Age. However that may be, the 
old religion was full of spirit and color, and no more 
fantastic in its details than it must needs be in those 
old times of childlike imagination, when the only way 
men had of approaching spiritual truth was to watch 
the way things happened in the world around and 
within them, and guess that those happenings were 
symbolic of the underlying meaning of the universe. 

According to the old traditions, the beginning of 
the world came about through the union of Frost and 
Fire, producing the giant Ymer. Three brother-gods, 
Odin (Spirit), Vile (Will) and Ve (Holiness), slew 
this giant, and made him over into the present world. 
The giant's bones formed the rocks, his flesh the soil, 



294 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

his blood the ocean, his hair the forests; the brains 
within his skull were made into clouds to float within 
the enclosing vault of the sky. The first man and 
woman were created respectively out of a strong ash- 
tree and a graceful elm. Life was said to be really 
a sort of tree-growth (the tree Ygdrasil was the sym- 
bol of human life), rooted partly in a dreary under- 
world (Niflheim), partly in the world of evil giants 
(Jotunheim) and partly in the realm of the gods 
(Asgard). Three implacable spirits (Norns), the 
Past, Present and Future, watered the tree and 
watched its growth. The branches of this Tree had 
endless divisions and subdivisions, reaching out 
through the whole universe, even to the farthest 
heaven. A curiously vague and puzzling tradition 
declared that the great god Odin, the All Father, 
voluntarily hung on this Tree of human life nine 
nights, sacrificing Himself unto Himself. 

All life was ceaseless struggle and warfare between 
the (good) gods and the (evil) giants. Foremost 
among the fighting gods was Thor; his characteristic 
weapon was a gigantic hammer, which flashed fire 
(lightning) when it struck; the awful roar of its 
blow (thunder) could be heard rolling back and forth 
among the mountains when the battle was hot. Balder 
was the kindly, genial god who made the sun shine, 
giving good crops, cheerful warmth and brightness 
and good-will. JEgir was the rich and powerful giant of 
the sea. Loke was an evil giant, who had someway 
gained a place among the gods and worked all sorts 
of deceitful and malicious mischief — a sort of Scan- 
dinavian Mephistopheles. One of Loke's children was 
a gigantic monster called the Midgard-serpent ; the 
gods threw him off into the ocean, where he lay under 
the water, encircling the whole earth and stirring up 



RELIGION IxN NORWAY 295 

mighty commotion when he bit his own tail. Another 
child of Loke was Hel, a dismal giantess, who claimed 
for her domain all men who died by the ignoble way 
of disease or old age. 

The only noble way to die was in battle with what 
seemed evil. All men who did die fighting were led 
away, after death, to dwell with the gods themselves in 
Valhal, until the time should come for the very last 
fight of all, Ragnarok, before the end of the world. 

Worship included sacrifice (usually of animals, but 
sometimes of human beings), and a somewhat 
elaborate ritual. (See list of books on Norse Mythol- 
ogy, pages 355-356.) 

The adventurous voyages of the Vikings in the 
eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, made them aware 
of the existence of a very different faith. Captives 
brought home from Continental Europe and the Brit- 
ish Isles also did something to spread information 
about Christian theology; but for two or three cen- 
turies the chief interest taken by Norsemen in the 
Christian religion was in virtue of the fact that 
churches and monasteries were treasuries of gold and 
silver, well worth the trouble of a predatory voyage. 
(See page 245.) King Haakon the Good, about 930 
A. D., was converted to Christianity while in England, 
and the tide began to turn, but popular feeling was so 
strong in favor of the older faith that for a hun- 
dred years longer very little was accompHshed in the 
way of a change. King Olaf Tryggvason did at least 
check a strong backward movement in his own time 
by shrewdly meeting the demand of the conservatives 
on their own ground. They insisted that he demon- 
strate his (pagan) orthodoxy by offering sacrifice to 
the ancient gods. He said, very well, he would do so, 
if they could be satisfied only in that way; and, in 



296 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

order that the sacrifice might be most efficacious, he 
would offer up the Hves of their own leading men of 
the conservative party ! This struck them as excessive 
zeal, and the contention was temporarily dropped. 

A few interesting traces of the old paganism can 
still be traced in the life of to-day. One is specially 
characteristic of Scandinavia — ^the celebration of Mid- 
summer Day. They call it now St. John's Day (June 
24) ; it is a Christianized continuance of the old festi- 
val in honor of Balder the Beautiful, the Sun God, at 
the time when his beneficent power was at its height, 
banishing darkness and cold and making all green 
things grow. The lighting of bonfires, displaying of 
lanterns and dancing out-of-doors, still made a part 
of the holiday fun of young folks in many parts of 
Norway on this date, are poetic survivals of very 
ancient religious rites, though now the celebration has 
no religious significance. 

Another survival of the old faith we ourselves share 
with the Norse people. It is the custom of reckoning 
certain days of the week as consecrated to certain of 
the old gods — e. g., Wodin's (or Odin's) day = Wed- 
nesday. Thor's day=Thursday. Freya's day = Friday. 
Our inheritance comes by way of the Anglo-Saxons, 
an ancient Germanic people, who held many religious 
ideas in common with their Scandinavian kinsfolk. 

Carlyle, in his essay on The Hero as Divinity (in 
Heroes and Hero Worship), says of the older 
faith :— 

"To me there is in the Norse system some- 
thing very genuine, very great and manlike. A 
broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from 
the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, 
distinguishes this Scandinavian system. It is 
Thought; the genuine thought of deep, rude, 
earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about 



RELIGION IN NORWAY 297 

them ; a face-to- face and heart-to-heart inspection 
of the things — the first characteristic of all good 
Thought in all times." 

"I feel that these old Northmen were looking 
into Nature with open eye and soul, most earn- 
est, honest, childlike and yet manlike; with a 
great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, 
in a loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right, 
valiant, true old race of men. Such recognition 
of Nature one finds to be the chief element of 
Paganism; recognition of Man and his Moral 
Duty, though this, too, is not wanting, comes to 
be the chief element only in purer forms of 
religion." 

"Man first puts himself in relation with Nature 
and her Powers, wonders and worships over 
those; not till a later epoch does he discern that 
all power is moral, that the grand point is the dis- 
tinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shalt 
and Thou shalt not." 

The technical transformation of Norway from a 
pagan to a Christian land was accomplished by a 
second King Olaf, who reigned from 1016 to 1030 — 
the one who subsequently became known as Saint 
Olaf. Longfellow's well-known verses, called The 
Saga of King Olaf, probably give a good idea of the 
rough-and-ready methods of conversion practised in 
those days. 

''Then King Olaf cried aloud 
'I will talk with this mighty Raud, 
And along the Salten Fjord 
Preach the Gospel with my sword, 
Or be brought back in my shroud.' 
Northward from Drontheim 
Sailed King Olaf. 

"Then baptised they all that region. 
Swarthy Lapp and fair Norwegian, 
Far as swims the salmon, leaping 



298 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Up the streams of Salten Fjord. 
In their temples Thor and Odin 
Lay in dust and ashes trodden, 
As King Olaf, onward sweeping, 

Preached the Gospel with his sword." 

For five hundred years (i. e., until the middle of 
the sixteenth century) Norway was a stronghold of 
the Catholic Church. The burial place of Saint Olaf 
at Trondhjem became a miracle-working shrine, where 
pilgrims flocked from all parts of Europe. Then, in 
the sixteenth century, the doctrines of Martin Luther 
took a strong hold on the people, and the State Church 
became Protestant, remaining so to the present time. 

The Established Church to-day is an integral part 
of the national organization. The sovereign, all mem- 
bers of the Council, (Cabinet), all professors of 
theology in the State University, all superintendents 
of elementary schools and principals of higher schools 
must be communicants in the Lutheran Church. All 
forms of reUgion not evidently harmful to public 
morals are tolerated, but parents professing the 
Lutheran faith must bring up their children in that 
faith, having them taught the catechism and exam- 
ined for a confirmation certificate. Such a certificate 
is usually required of any young person, either boy or 
girl, applying for a wage-earning position, even in do- 
mestic service. Theologically the Church is based 
on the Apostolic, Nicene-Constantinople and Athan- 
asian Creeds, on the Augsburg Confession of 1530, 
and Luther's Shorter Catechism. 

The country is divided into six dioceses, and each 
diocese into deaconries or archdeaconries, of which 
there are 83. These include among them 478 livings, 
consisting altogether of 956 parishes. The King is 
ex-oiHcio the final authority in all business matters 
relating to the State Church, e. g., the building of 



RELIGION IN NORWAY 299 

houses of worship, the laying-out of church-yards, 
etc. There is no such thing as complete local inde- 
pendence in these matters. 

The Church possesses funds of generous size, partly 
the proceeds of the sale of very valuable properties 
accumulated in Catholic Churches and monasteries 
during the five centuries before the Reformation. It 
still owns valuable lands and collects rents from their 
occupants. The salaries of the higher Church dig- 
nitaries and city clergy are modest in proportion to 
those paid in other countries. Parish priests in the 
country districts have very slender incomes. All the 
clergy are appointed by the King, though in most 
cases the appointment amounts merely to endorsing a 
local nominee. The priest has a house or an allow- 
ance for house-rent; sometimes he receives sums as 
ground-rent for Church lands or a sum direct from 
the Church treasury; local fees and voluntary offer- 
ings make up the total. 

The Norwegians are a sturdily religious people. 
The country is an excellent market for religious 
books. As a rule the spiritual life of the people is a 
steady, quiet growth, marked by little excitement, but 
in the northern provinces, during the long, dark win- 
ter, when there is very little active work to preoccupy 
the attention, waves of emotional experience some- 
times sweep through a little community, producing a 
variety of social effects and making sharp divisions 
of feeling and opinion on matters doctrinal. These 
movements are, however, not wide-spread. The num- 
ber of Dissenters from the Lutheran Church is only 
about two per cent, of the registered population. Of 
that number the larger part are Methodists. 

For sixty years a well organized Norwegian Mis- 



300 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

sionary Society has supported Christian workers in 
foreign fields, especially in Zululand, Natal and Mada- 
gascar. 

The Norwegian Bible Society is constantly distribut- 
ing copies of the Scriptures. In 1898 alone its agents 
disposed of 54,868 Bibles. 



Transportation and Communication 

Up to the present time it has not seemed practicable 
or imperatively important to build railroads in Nor- 
way on any very extensive scale. The total length of 
State railvi^ays is 1,276 miles ; 204 additional miles are 
covered by private enterprise. All the towns of any 
importance were built by the sea (see Maps 1 and 2), 
and travel by water is so much cheaper that it is still 
made to answer most practical purposes. 

The longest railway line in the kingdom (350 
miles) runs northward from Christiania up the valley 
of the Glommen river, to a point near its source ; then 
it crosses the watershed between the Glommen and 
the Gula, and follows the valley of the latter stream 
down to Trondhjem. This railway line is of much 
commercial importance, express trains making the 
trip in seventeen hours. The valley region traversed 
(known as Osterdalen) is very rich in timber, and 
the people are exceptionally prosperous, but the coun- 
try is much less interesting to the tourist than the 
coast- regions around the mountain-walled fjords. 

Another important railway runs southeastward from 
Christiania across the Swedish frontier and down to 
the Swedish ports of Goteborg and Malmo, connect- 
ing there with lines for various parts of Sweden. 

Still another through line runs from Trondhjem 
eastward across the Swedish frontier, and then down 
to Geflc and Stockholm. 

The most northerly railway in the world runs from 
the Norwegian port of Victoriahaven (68° 30' N. 



302 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

lat.), near the fishing banks of the Lofoten Islands, 
across the frontier and down across northern Sweden 
to the head of the Baltic. 

In southwestern Norway the few railway lines are 
short and of merely local importance. 

A railroad connecting Christiania with Bergen is 
in process of construction, and will be completed in 
1907. This will reduce the transportation distance 
between the two most important commercial centers 
of the country from 423 miles by sea to 310 miles by 
rail, and will reduce the time to one-third. Sixty 
miles of the line will lie more than 2,300 feet above sea 
level. On account of the heavy snow, parts of the 
line will have to be covered. This new mountain route 
will, no doubt, prove a great attraction to the tourist. 

An interesting scheme for getting local freight 
across-country in one of the southern provinces 
(Bratsberg) is the connection of already existing 
rivers and lakes by means of canals, thus completing 
a waterway from a fjord of the Skagerrak away up 
into the interior of the country. (Position 24 
takes us to the most picturesque part of the Bandak- 
Nordsjo Canal.) Map 2 shows how thickly southern 
Norway is sprinkled with lakes and threaded by 
streams. Water lies or runs in all the innumerable 
hollows between the hills, and it would not take many 
connecting links like the Bandak-Nordsjo Canal, to 
make a network of water-highways over this part of 
the kingdom. 

As one might expect, when the immense extent of 
indented sea-coast is considered, Norway's main re- 
liance for travel is by boat. The Norwegian merchant 
marine itself includes over 7,200 vessels, large or small, 
with 1,443,308 aggregate tonnage, and foreign ves- 
sels are continually coming and going. In a single 



TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 303 

year records show that 13,162 vessels (including Nor- 
wegian and foreign) have been entered at the various 
Norwegian ports, nearly as many having been cleared. 
Christiania, Bergen and Trondhjem are the three most 
important ports. 

In those interior districts where railways are not 
yet built, an interesting system of "posting" is in suc- 
cessful operation. The State has greatly improved 
many of the old highways and constructed various 
new ones, furnishing excellently kept roads for travel 
with horses and carriages. Farmers living on these 
roads at intervals of a few miles (from six to twelve 
miles, according to circumstances), are licensed by 
the State to supply horses, vehicles and drivers at 
certain fixed rates, and to act as innkeepers, furnish- 
ing lodgings and meals to travelers. In some cases 
the license is greatly desired by a farmer, as a means 
of increasing his too slender income. In other cases, 
where a farmer is more prosperous, he may not be 
at all desirous of opening his house to every chance- 
comer or of finding horses and drivers for everybody 
who may pause at his door; but, if his home is so 
located that it offers the only possibility of changing 
horses without an undesirably long journey for tired 
beasts, he may be obliged to take the license and 
charge himself with its responsibilities. 

Skydsstationer (Posting-stations) are of two classes 
— (1) "fast," where the manager is bound to keep 
enough horses on hand to provide fresh animals with- 
ing half an hour; (2) "slow," where the charge is 
less, and travelers may have to wait anywhere from 
an hour to half a day, according to circumstances. 
(In summer, when farm-work is most heavy, it may 
cause a farmer a good deal of trouble in his own work 



304 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

to let his horses go just when he needs to be plough- 
ing or doing other field work). 

The charges at "fast" stations are about nine cents 
a mile (English mile) for a horse and kariol (for 
one passenger) or horse and stolkjcerre with one pas- 
senger. If there are two passengers, a stolkjcerre is 
essential, and the charge is half as large again. Both 
vehicles are open wagons, baggage being fastened 
behind. The driver, usually a boy or girl in the teens, 
perches on the baggage behind the passengers. 
Travelers often telephone ahead to have vehicles re- 
served for them at a certain time. 

The horses are small but strong, and, as a rule, well 
fed and well-treated — seldom overworked — due to a 
system of inspection. Five or six miles an hour is an 
average rate of speed on a road of average difficulty ; in 
many places the roads are so very steep the rate must 
be much slower. 



Telegraph and telephone lines have been con- 
structed by the State on a notably generous scale. 
In 1903 the government owned and operated 8,555 
miles of line, using 54,598 miles of wire. There are 
762 telegraph offices in the kingdom. Telephone sta- 
tions are immensely more numerous still, so many 
posting stations and private houses having installed 
the apparatus. More than two million conversations 
take place over the "'trunk" (main) telephone lines in 
a single year. 

The mail service is also used for the transaction of 
a great volume of business and social correspondence, 
and for the sending of small parcels. In a single year 
the Norwegian post-offices have handled: — 
61,197,100 letters, 
8,204,500 post-cards, 



TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 305 

1,256,400 registered letters 
58,140,800 newspapers and magazines, 

8,302,300 pieces other than printed mattef, 

1,161,800 parcels. 
Of course, the figures given above include mail sent 
or received by foreigners traveling in Norway, but, 
even so, the figures are a very striking indication of 
the high average of intelligence in a country with 
only about two and a quarter million people — children 
and all. 



Government and Defense 

Norway is a constitutional monarchy. The present 
Constitution dates from May 17, 1814, though it has 
several times been modified in certain details since 
that time. 

The executive power is vested in the sovereign, 
H. M. King Haakon VII, who was elected by the 
Norwegian people in November, 1905. He was born 
in 1872, the grandson of King Christian IX of Den- 
mark, the second son of Prince Frederick (now King 
Frederick VIII) of Denmark. He is the nephew of 
King George of Greece, of Queen Alexandra of Eng- 
land, and of the Dowager Empress of Russia. In 
1896 he married his cousin, Princess Maud of England, 
third daughter of King Edward VII and Queen 
Alexandra. 

Crown Prince Olaf was born in 1903. 

The legislative power of the Norwegian realm is 
vested in the Storthing (literally Great Assembly) 
or Parliament, which represents the people. 

The King has command of the land and sea forces 
and makes all judicial and ecclesiastical and various 
other administrative appointments. 

All male citizens 25 years of age and five years resi- 
dent in the country may vote for members of the 
Storthing. Members have an allowance of $3.25 daily 
during sessions, besides traveling expenses. The 
Storthing assembles every year, of its own right, not 
merely as summoned by the sovereign. Its 117 mem- 
bers are elected by deputies of the people for three- 



GOVERNMENT AND DEFENSE 307 

year terms ; 39 represent towns and 78 represent rural 
districts. 

The King may call extra sessions of the Storthing 
if necessary, but he cannot dissolve it. Members of 
the Storthing themselves divide their number into two 
bodies, electing one-fourth of their own number to 
constitute a sort of Upper House (Lagthing), the 
other three-fourths forming the Lower House 
{Odelsthing). The chief business of the Storthing is 
to enact or repeal laws, to impose taxes, supervise the 
finances and examine treaties. Bills are laid first be- 
fore the Odelsthing, then go up to the Lagthing. If 
the two houses do not agree, the bill is considered 
again in joint session and decided by a two-thirds 
majority vote. Bills that have passed both houses go 
to the sovereign for his approval before they become 
laws. The King's veto is, however, not absolute, but 
only suspensive. If three successive Storthings, meet- 
ing after three successive elections, pass a certain 
measure, it may become a law in spite of the veto. 

The Council of State, or Cabinet, is composed of 
ministers appointed by the King, with fields of re- 
sponsibility divided into: — 

Ecclesiastical and Educational Affairs. Charities. 

Justice and Police. 

Interior Affairs (Commerce, Consular Affairs, 

etc.) 
Agriculture. 

Public Works (Railways, Telegraphs, etc.) 
Finance. 

Defence (Army and Navy). 
Auditing and Revision. 

The kingdom of Norway is divided into twenty 
provinces or counties (amter), i. e., eighteen large 
geographical districts, besides the towns of Christiania 
and Bergen, each of which constitutes an amt by it- 



308 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

self. The head of a provincial administration is a 
prefect {Amtmand) . The provinces have been sub- 
divided into districts under sub-prefects, whose duties 
included tax-collecting and certain police supervision. 
This grade of administrative service is, however, to be 
remodeled or abolished. 

A "magistracy" composed of three burgomasters 
presides over local municipal affairs in Christiania 
and in Bergen. (The smaller municipalities usually 
have but one "magistrate" instead of a board of three 
members). There are 59 municipalities in the king- 
dom, twenty of these being very small, but keeping 
up the form of local government prescribed for such 
organizations. Each municipality has a Council, whose 
members are elected for three years, and the Council is 
divided into two sections, one-fourth of the members 
forming the special Aldermanic body (Formcsnd). 
The chairmanship of the Municipal Council is an 
honorary but honorable office. 

In order to vote for members of a Municipal 
Council, a man must be 25 years of age, and at least 
two years a resident, must have paid taxes on property 
or income or both; he must not be a pauper nor a 
house-servant. 

Besides the municipalities, the amter include 525 
rural districts (herreder) , each of which in most cases 
includes several parishes. The parish is the social unit. 
The various districts in any one province (amt) to- 
gether form a provincial corporation (amtskommune) . 

In the towns and rural districts civil disputes are 
carried first before a Board of Conciliation (For- 
ligelseskommission). This Board is empowered to 
settle cases where values less than one thousand 
crowns ($270) are in question. 



GOVERNMENT AND DEFENSE 309 

Regular Courts of Justice of the first instance are 
established for various districts in a province, usually 
in some municipality. Above these lower courts are 
certain Appellate Courts, to which cases may be car- 
ried from the Courts of first instance. (In Christiania 
and Bergen, what are called "Town Courts" amount 
to the same thing as Appellate Courts.) 

A Supreme Court stands above the Appellate 
Courts. 

In country districts farmers often pay their taxes 
in work on road-making, bridge repairs, etc. 

Capital punishment has not been practised since 
1876. 

Norway does not expend any considerable sums on 
her national defenses. The appropriations made by 
Parliament for the army and the constitution and 
maintenance of fortresses, 1904-5, amounted to only 
$3,316,680. The appropriations for the navy, 1904-5, 
were $1,065,960. Her fortresses are few and at pres- 
ent not of remarkable strength, though the approaches 
to Christiania, Christiansand, Bergen, Trondhjem, 
Vardo, and a few other ports, are guarded by certain 
fortifications. 

The military troops are raised mainly by conscrip- 
tion, and to a small extent by enlistment. All men be- 
come liable to conscription at the age of twenty-two. 
Raw recruits are given 48 days training in the in- 
fantry and forest-artillery ; 72 days in the engineers ; 
60 days in the mountain artillery; 92 days in field 
artillery; 102 days in the cavalry. After that they 
are put into regular battalions, where they practise a 
certain number of weeks yearly, and are the rest of 
the year on furlough, with the obligation to meet their 
regiments on summons. The nominal term of service 



310 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

lasts sixteen years — six in the regular Line and ten in 
Reserves. Every man in the realm, between eighteen 
and fifty years of age, may, if necessary, be called on 
by the sovereign to fight with the reserve troops for 
home defense, though the King's summons must be 
approved by Parliament. 

The navy is maintained solely for coast defense, and 
is of comparatively little strength, none of the armored 
vessels being formidable as to size and equipment. All 
seafaring men between the ages of twenty-two and 
thirty-eight are legally liable to maritime conscrip- 
tion, but in actual practice only a few hundred are 
drafted each year for a few weeks' training. 



Occupations and Incomes 

A large proportion of the people get their living 
direct from mother Earth, as farmers or stock-raisers. 
The latest census returns show that 125,276 persons are 
proprietors and employers, while 183,740 persons are 
wage-earners, the two classes together supporting 
343,381 dependents (women, children and old people). 
Altogether, therefore, 652,397 persons, or nearly 30% 
of the whole population get their living direct from 
Norway's few fertile acres. A little less than 5% 
(including 40,190 employers or independent workers, 
10,557 employes and 58,041 dependents), get their 
living from the sea, through the fisheries. 

About 21% (including 80,550 employers, 162,092 
employes and 221,835 dependents), get their living in 
various industries and in mining (silver, copper, iron 
pyrites, feldspar, etc.) 

The chief factory industries are those of the saw- 
mill, flour-mill, wood-pulp-mill, match-factory, 
brewery, cloth-mill, and india-rubber factory. 

The smaller industries most widely practised are 
naturally the simple, universal crafts of the tailor, 
shoemaker, carpenter, mason, smith, joiner, cooper, 
etc. Sewing, spinning and knitting are done for 
wages by 22,201 women. 

Not quite 6% (129,353) live on the profits of shop- 
keeping and wholesale trade. Transportation, in- 
cluding both railway and posting, provides bread and 
butter for 5% (116,893 people). 

Three per cent, of the people are supported by the 
work of professional men and women, or by persons 
holding salaried positions under the government. 



312 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

About the same number (less than 75,000) Hve on 
incomes from invested capital. 

All the total figures given above include both re- 
sponsible heads of families and those dependent upon 
them. 

Norway's money system is based on a gold stand- 
ard. Only one bank (owned partly by the State and 
partly by individual stockholders), is empowered to 
issue bank-notes. The State coins gold, silver, cop- 
per and bronze, in values calculated on a decimal 
system. 

The pieces in most common circulation are silver 
and copper or bronze coin. Values are reckoned in 
crowns (kroner), equivalent to 27 cents in American 
money or 1 shilling Ij^ pence in British money. The 
crown is divisible into 100 parts, called ore (a little 
more than j4 cent). The heaviest gold-piece is 
worth 20 crowns ($5.40). 

A person with an income of 10,000 crowns ($2,700) 
is considered distinctly *'well-off"; the possessor of 
more than this would be accounted rich even in 
Christiania. The average middle-class income in one 
of the provincial towns is not much over 3,000 crowns 
($810). A tradesman is considered prosperous if 
he makes half that amount. Farmers' incomes average 
hardly more than $220. Ordinary mechanics and 
artisans earn about $150. House servants and farm 
laborers earn less than $100. 

Wage-rates are gradually rising. It is stated in an 
official work on Norway (Konow & Fischer) that the 
average income of employers is at present actually 
less than the average income of employes. 

Among other demands the employer of factory 
labor has to meet is that of a special government as- 
sessment for funds insuring their employes against 



OCCUPATIONS AND INCOMES 313 

accidents. This assessment cannot be transferred to 
the wage-account and so collected from the wage- 
earners, but must come out of the profits of the busi- 
ness. Children under fourteen years of age cannot 
legally be employed in factories at all. Young people 
under eighteen are debarred from certain lines of em- 
ployment, and must not be required to work more 
than 10 hours daily. Men cannot legally be required 
to work after 6 P. M. on the day preceding Sunday, or 
any recognized holy-day. Except for this stipulation 
there is at present no definite legal restriction of the 
length of a day's work for an adult, but efforts are 
being made to secure the passage of a 10-hour law. 

Savings-banks are numerous and well-managed, 
having 718,823 depositors. Many of the Norwegian 
municipalities have Building Loan funds, from which 
working men may borrow money at low rates for 
building cheap homes. Overcrowded houses are a 
conspicuous evil in the capital and other large cen- 
ters of population, and efforts are being made to cor- 
rect it. 

Life insurance is placed by agents of private com- 
panies in the few large towns, but country people 
seldom save on this plan. It is, however, a common 
custom for an elderly farmer to deed a home estate 
to his eldest son, himself receiving a pension for life 
and retiring from active management of affairs. 

In connection with these facts about incomes 
earned within the kingdom, it is of interest to know 
United States postal records show that, in a single 
year, Norwegians living in the United States have 
sent home to relatives and friends over a million dol- 
lars ($1,000,000). The tide of emigration continually 
rises ; in 1903 the figures reached 25,109. The postal 
statistics are significant, showing that in spite of the 
departure of an increasing number of workers, the 



314 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

home-country is by no means allowed to lose all the 
results of their labor elsewhere. 

The foreign commerce of the kingdom amounts an- 
nually to: — 

$79,057,620 imports, 
46,878,480 exports. 

Among the largest import items are breadstuffs, 
tea and coffee, sugar, tobacco and manufactured goods 
of various sorts. 

Among the more important exported articles are 
granite and timber, for use in constructive enterprises 
all over Europe; wood-pulp for the European paper 
mills; matches; iron for the great cutlery works at 
Birmingham and Sheffield (England) ; feldspar for 
use in continental porcelain factories ; cod and herring 
for the food of Norway's European neighbors. 



AMUSEMENTS 

A wise man of the Orient once said: — "Tell me 
your amusements, and I will tell you what you are." 
Norway's self-record in this line is particularly in- 
teresting and significant. 

Almost every amusement popular in Norway is 
some form of athletics. From the most far-off ancient 
times it has been so; Norse youth for hundreds and 
hundreds of years have found their greatest delight 
in sports like hunting, swimming, rowing, running, 
climbing, leaping, snow-shoe racing, ball-playing, 
wrestling and fencing. Dancing — at present one of 
the most popular amusements of the land — comes un- 
der the head of athletic exercises, for though the 
palace ball-room at Christiania is as sedately dignified 
as that of Berlin or St. Petersburg, country dances to 
this day are mighty vigorous exercise, including not a 
little hilarious competition in high kicking. The 
amount of it is that the Norse people always have 
had splendid bodily strength and agility. Their physi- 
cal development is, of course, kept back to a certain 
extent by (1) the too frugal diet imposed by necessity 
in a poor farming country; (2) their prejudice in 
favor of unventilated houses.* In spite of all these 
drawbacks, the typical Norseman is a fine, sturdy 
specimen of humanity. 

It is interesting to note that the chief indoor game 
played in old times appears to have been not a game 



♦Tuberculosis is the most devastating malady in Norway — a natural 
consequence of poor house ventilation. However, people here, as well as 
in other countries, are beginning to realize the hygienic importance of 
clean air. 



816 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

oi mere luck-and-chance, but a genuine wrestling witli 
the brains — a game much like that most intellectually 
exacting of pastimes known as chess. Away back in 
the dark ages when Fridthjofs Saga was written, 
people living in remote mountain-walled corners of 
the land kept their wits awake through the long winter 
twilights matching foresight and shrewdness against 
foresight and shrewdness over the famiUar field of a 
board divided into squares. The fact is significant of 
the national love of positive, aggressive activity. 

The most widely-known taste of the people in the 
way of indoor amusements has, however, been in 
the line of songs and stories. The oldest Northern 
chronicles were stories of the doings of gods and 
giants, heroes and kings, handed down verbally from 
one generation to another. For centuries the telling 
of stories and reciting of poems has been one of the 
chief sources of entertainment in Norway. The old 
Norse taste for listening to musically rhythmic stories 
survives to-day in the form of love of music. Con- 
certs as such are seldom given outside the larger 
towns, but at Christiania, Bergen and other centers 
of a considerable population, really fine music meets 
with genuine appreciation, indeed, the town authori- 
ties appropriate yearly generous sums in support of 
concerts of a high artistic order. The whole world 
of music lovers knows the genius of at least two sons 
of Norway who made their homes in Bergen — Ole 
Bull, the famous violinist (died in 1880), and Edvard 
Grieg, to-day acknowledged one of the greatest of 
the world's musical composers. 

The Norwegians are distinctly a reading people. 
Absolute illiteracy is practically non-existent (see p. 
289), and it is true to a large extent that the people 
not only know how to read, but really enjoy read- 



AMUSEMENTS IN NORWAY 317 

ing. The inherited taste for tales of love and adven- 
ture finds food in these later days in the form of 
newspapers, story-books and novels. Bjornson's stories 
of Norwegian country life are exceedingly popular; 
so are the works of the other home-authors. Of course, 
the literature of Denmark is all open to Norwegian 
readers, the language being practically identical, and 
great number of English books are read in transla- 
tion. The humorous tales of Mark Twain, for ex- 
ample, are nearly as well known in Norway as in 
America. 

Theatres are found in every town of fair size, and 
are well patronized; the audiences in Christiania and 
Bergen have opportunities to hear the plays of their 
famous countrymen, Ibsen and Bjornson, and also 
the best dramas of other lands, rendered in transla- 
tion. The municipality of Christiania grants money 
every year towards the support of its leading theatre, 
and Bergen does the same. The result is that Shake- 
speare and Goethe — not to mention men of lesser 
genius — are well known to cultivated people in King 
Haakon's land, just the same as in the lands where 
English and German are native to the soil. 

It must be confessed that for many centuries hard 
drinking was one of the most popular amusements in 
Norway. The taste for intoxicating drinks was a 
natural inheritance from the vigorous, hard-hitting 
sons of the Viking Age. As always where men "put 
an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains," 
the consequences have been disastrous. But popular 
feeling has awakened to the situation, and now, for 
a number of years, a strong movement has been 
exerted to master the evil of excessive indulgence, and 
with marvelous success. 

A system of "local option'' is now established. 



318 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

whereby a community with a strong sentiment against 
drunkenness is enabled to prohibit entirely the local 
sale of intoxicating drinks. Women with certain 
property qualifications may vote on a question of liquor 
sales. 

In incorporated towns retail sales may be made only 
between 8 A. M. and 10 P. M., and by samlags (asso- 
ciations) licensed by vote. The State takes sixty-five 
per cent, of the profits, the Amt (county or province) 
ten per cent., and the municipality ten per cent. The 
accounts are audited by government inspectors. The 
promoters of the business having no opportunity to 
make fortunes out of its growth, and, consequently, 
no incentive to push sales, the volume of business de- 
pends only on the appetite of the individual. The 
funds flowing into town, county and State treasuries 
are used for the maintenance of hospitals, penal in- 
stitutions and public works of general utility. 

Thus the principle of personal liberty, so jealously 
guarded by Norsemen, is essentially maintained, and 
yet the wretched consequences of a laissez faire sys- 
tem are being avoided. The result of this policy is 
that at the present time the consumption of alcohol in 
Norway has decreased till it is only 2.2 litres per 
capita, annually, against 



16 


litres 


in 


France, 


10.7 








Belgium, 


10.1 








Denmark, 


9.9 








Italy, 


8.6 








Germany, 


7.4 








Great Britain.* 



* Figures given in Konow & Fischer's official publication on Norway. 



LANGUAGE 

The language spoken in Norway in the days of the 
Vikings, a growth from old Teutonic roots, is still 
spoken in Iceland by the descendants of Norse emi- 
grants to that island; in Norway it gradually changed 
into the various dialects still spoken by the peasants. 

The written language of the kingdom, as a whole, is 
almost the same as that of Denmark (Danish), though 
in many details the Norwegian-Danish of the cities 
has always differed from the Danish of Copenhagen. 
The use of Danish was the result of the union with 
Denmark in the fourteenth century. For more than 
four hundred years from that time Norway was united 
with Denmark. Her sovereigns spoke Danish. It 
was necessary to learn Danish in order to get along 
either in business or in political life, so, very naturally, 
people gradually got into the way of using the new 
tongue. After a century or so Danish was the only 
book language the people knew. It had always had 
a strong resemblance to their own home speech, so 
the transition was not difficult. 

Many words to-day in common use all over Norway 
show close kinship to corresponding words or phrases 
in German and Dutch — likewise of Teutonic origin. 
Moreover, a great many common words are almost 
precisely the same as in modern English. Generally 
our English word is derived from the old Anglo- 
Saxon, a Teutonic tongue closely akin to old Norse. 
Notice the following examples : — 



320 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



Modem Ahorse. 


Modern English. 


Old AnglO'S 


Dal 


Dale 


Dael 


Glad 


Glad 


Glsed 


Brod 


Bread 


Bread 


Broder 


Brother 


Brother 


Kold 


Cold 


Ceald 


Haand 


Hand 


Hand 


Nord 


North 


North 


Over 


Over 


Ofer 


Salt 


Salt 


Sealt 


Bord 


Board 


Bord 


Tak 


Thank 


Thank 


Vind 


Wind 


Wind 


Vel 


Well 


Wei 



Ivar Aasen, the famous poet and linguist, about half 
a century ago, did a great work by awakening in Nor- 
way new interest in the Norwegian dialects, among 
people who had been in the habit of speaking and 
reading only Danish. The idea of reviving the na- 
tional language has appealed strongly to many popu- 
lar writers, educators and public speakers, and a defi- 
nite campaign has been conducted toward that end. 
The result is to-day that Norse authors are using 
more and more of the distinctively national speech 
and the written language has within a quarter cen- 
tury been both modified and simplified — so much so 
as to lead to the making of revised dictionaries for 
use by Norwegians themselves and by students of 
their literature. Furthermore, as a result of Aasen's 
agitation many writers have written in the dialects, 
or in a new national language, based on the dialects, 
the so-called LandsmaaL the literature of which is 
now extensive and important. 



LITERATURE* 

The world's literature has been magnificently en- 
riched by Norse genius. This genius for poetry and 
history was early displayed. Tactitus, the Roman his- 
torian, who visited the Germans in the first century of 
our era (99 A. D.), found that they knew something 
of the art of poetry. There is no reason to doubt 
that their northern kinsmen, the Scandinavians, also 
cultivated this art. As the Germans of the time of 
Tacitus did not know the art of writing, none of the 
literary productions of that time have been pre- 
served. Even after the Scandinavians learned the 
Runes, they did not use them for the preservation of 
literary products. They were mainly used for short 
inscriptions on wood or stone, no doubt on account 
of the lack of proper writing materials. 

We have some reason for believing in the existence 
of literary products in Norway, in the early centuries 
of the Christian era. Here and there on old monu- 
mental stones there are snatches of verse in Old Runic, 
as on the famous Tune Stone, found in southeastern 
Norway, the language of which is so archaic as to 
place it in the prehistoric period 400-600. But we 
know nothing of complete poems and their authors 
until the historical Viking Age. These products are 
of such a nature in respect to both poetic form and 
content that one is forced to the conclusion that the 
art of poetry had long been practised. One of the 
best-known of these poems is on the genealogy of the 
Norse kings, an indication that poetry was early a 
hand-maid of history. The alliterative lines of this 



This chapter is, is the main, the work of the Editor. 



322 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

old poetry were a powerful aid to the memory in the 
retention of historical knowledge. The oldest of these 
poems belong to the beginning of the ninth century. 
They contain, however, little that is of general interest. 

But there is a collection of old Norse poems, known 
as the Elder Edda, composed mainly during the tenth 
century, that are of very great importance in the his- 
tory of literature. The name Edda, as applied to this 
old manuscript of poems, is a fortuitous one, and 
means poetics. The name was originally applied to 
a work on poetry by the Icelandic poet and historian, 
Snorri Sturlason; this work is now known as the 
Younger Edda, or Prose Edda, while the former is 
called the Elder Edda, or Poetic Edda, and some- 
times, but incorrectly, Saemund's Edda. 

There is no doubt about the fact that the Younger 
Edda is mainly the work of Snorri Sturlason, and 
hence is an Icelandic product. The home of the Edda 
poems, however, is not so evident. On account of 
their very great literary and cultural significance, 
there has been much discussion as to their origin. 
It was once thought that they were much older than 
they really are, and that they were the lyric outburst 
of the primitive Teutons in the early centuries of 
our era. Philologists soon saw the ridiculousness of 
this assumption. It took no account of the fact that 
the language of the Scandinavians had, during the 
period from 600 to 800, undergone great and radical 
changes. It had become so simplified that a poem of 
the ninth century would take many more words to 
satisfy the meter than a poem of the seventh cen- 
tury. In other words, it is absolutely certain that the 
Edda poems could not have been written before 800 
A. D. Then, for a time, it was thought that these 
poems were the common possession of the Scandi- 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 323 

navians. But keen literary criticism soon annihilated 
that assumption. It soon became evident that they 
belonged either to the Norwegians or their colonists, 
or both. One of the very greatest scholars of our day 
in Norway, Professor Sophus Bugge, has devoted 
years to the study of the Edda poems, and contends 
that they were written by Norsemen in the British 
Isles, and that they bear many traces of the contact 
of the authors with British, especially Celtic, civiliza- 
tion. This was a severe blow to many enthusiastic 
Norwegians, who had looked upon the Edda poems 
as an expression of Scandinavian culture. Bugge's 
authority was so great, however, that for a time it 
was conceded that he must be right. 

But vigorous protests soon came, especially from 
German scholars. And, finally, in a great work on 
the history of old Norse literature, the well-known 
Icelander, Finnur Jonsson, professor at the University 
of Copenhagen, a most competent and conscientious 
scholar, makes emphatic and sweeping denial of Pro- 
fessor Bugge's theories. Of the thirty-nine Edda poems 
he assigns, definitely and unequivocally, thirty-one of 
them to Norway, six to Greenland, and only two to 
Iceland, his own native country. 

If Professor Jonsson's position proves impregnable, 
and there is abundant reason to believe that it will, 
he has done Norway the greatest service imaginable. 
To demonstrate that Norwegian poets of the tenth 
century were the authors of most of the Edda poems 
is the greatest possible compliment to the intellectual 
genius of the Norsemen of the Viking Age. For these 
poems are the high-water mark of pre-Christian civili- 
zation, not only in Scandinavia, but in all of the Teu- 
tonic countries. 

The poems of the Elder Edda have no special con- 



324 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

nection with each other; some are complete, others 
fragmentary, dividing themselves, however, into two 
classes, one class treating principally of the ancient 
gods (mythology), and the other treating of the 
heroes of antiquity, such as the heroes of the Nibelung 
story as found chiefly in the Volsunga Saga. The 
form of these poems, like the early poetry of the other 
Teutonic races, is alliterative verse. The mythic 
poems do not give any systematic presentation of 
Norse mythology, the heathen faith. That system has 
been constructed from them in connection with the 
mythological stories of the Younger Edda. Many of 
the poems are huge fragments, wrecks of their former 
selves, the inevitable result of having been carried 
down to the age of writing on the lips of skalds or 
bards. But, as they are practically our only source of 
Norse mythology, they are of inestimable value. 

We are apt to think of the Norsemen of the Viking 
Age as warriors and pirates. A study of the Edda 
poems would convince us, as Longfellow has phrased 
it, that "the ancient skald smote the strings of 
his harp with as bold a hand as the Berserk smote 
his foe." 

We cannot go into a detailed characterization of the 
Elder Edda. The reader is referred to the chapter 
on ''Books to Read" for references. We submit, how- 
ever, one quotation from a learned German scholar, 
the man who did so much many years ago to arouse 
his countrymen to an appreciation of the great Ger- 
man poem called Das Niehelungenlied. He says. — 

"If any monument of the primitive northern 
world deserves a place among the earlier remains 
of the South, the Old Norse Edda must be deemed 
worthy of that distinction. The spiritual venera- 
tion for Nature, to which the Greek was an en- 
tire stranger, gushes forth in the mysterious Ian- 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 325 

guage and prophetic traditions of the Edda, with 
a full tide of enthusiasm and inspiration sufficient 
to endure for centuries, and to supply a whole 
race of future bards with a precious and animat- 
ing elixir." 

This is sufficient to indicate that the Edda lays are 
very remarkable productions. And, indeed, they do 
possess a rugged and virile strength and fiery spirit. 
A mighty passion pulsates through their strains — pas- 
sions of men and women that are universal and 
permanent. There are in them titanic strength, pro- 
foundest pathos and deepest tragedy. 

The old parchment manuscript containing these 
poems was found in Iceland during the seventeenth 
century, and was presented by the Icelandic Bishop 
Brynjolf to the king of Denmark, and hence it is 
known to scholars as Codex Regius (the royal manu- 
script). It is still the proud possession of the great 
royal library of Copenhagen. The manuscript was 
written during the latter part of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, in Iceland; but this fact is, of course, no proof 
that the poems were produced there. It is, moreover, 
certain that the present manuscript is a copy of an 
older one, now lost. 

A complete translation into English prose of the 
Edda poems may be found in a very learned work on 
old Norse poetry, entitled Corpus Poeticum Boreale, 
published by Vigfusson and Powell of Oxford. Ex- 
tracts in metrical translation may be found in the 
various works on Norse mythology. 

We cannot undertake in this brief chapter to give 
an adequate account of the contents of the Elder 
Edda; they are too vast and varied for a brief treat- 
ment. But a mere glimpse is worth something. Here 
is a prose translation of some selected stanzas from 



326 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

a poem entitled Havamal (The High Song). It is full 
of wise and pithy saws, and treats of the conduct of 
life, the duty of hospitality, etc. Odin himself is rep- 
resented as the speaker. 

"A man that travels far needs his wits about 
him ; anything will pass at home. He that knows 
nought makes himself a gazing-stock when he sits 
among wise folk. . . . The wary guest who 
comes to his meal keeps a watchful silence. 
. . . But he that gabbles over a meal, little 
knows but that his baying will bring his foes upon 
him. . . . No man can bear better baggage 
on his way than wisdom; in strange places it is 
better than wealth. It is the wretched man's 
comfort. . . . No man can bear better bag- 
gage on his way than wisdom; no worse wallet 
can he carry on his way than ale-bibbing. . . . 
He that never is silent talks much folly. A ghb 
tongue, unless it be bridled, will often talk a 
man into trouble. . . . Chattels die; kins- 
men pass away; one dies oneself; but good re- 
port never dies from the man that gained it. 
. . . Anything is better than to be false; he 
is no friend who only speaks to please. . . . 
The fool thinks he shall live forever if he keep 
out of battle; but old age gives him no quarter, 
though the spears may. ... A fool thinks 
all that smile on him are his friends; but when 
he goes into court he shall find few advocates. 
. . . Every man of foresight should use his 
power with moderation; for he will find when he 
comes among valiant men that no man is peer- 
less. ... A man should be merry at home 
and cheerful with his guests, genial, of good man- 
ners and ready speech, if he will be held a man 
of good parts. A good man is in every one's 
mouth. Arch dunce is he who can speak nought, 
for that is the mark of a fool. . . . Tell one 
man [thy secret] but not two; what three know 
all the world knows. . . . He should rise be- 
times that would win. The slumbering wolf 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 327 

seldom gets a joint; nor the sleeping man vic- 
tory. . . . Go on! Be not a guest ever in 
the same house. Welcome becomes Wearisome if 
he sit too long at another's table." 

Another poem has these wise words : — 

"I counsel thee: Never let a bad man know 
thy mishaps; for of a bad man thou shalt never 
get good reward for thy sincerity. ... Be 
not the first to break off with thy friend. Sor- 
row will eat thy heart if thou lackest a friend to 
open thy heart to. . . . Never bandy words 
with mindless apes, for thou wilt never get good 
reward from an ill man's mouth ; but a good man 
will make thee strong in good favor and man's 
good will." 

This will indicate that the Edda poems do not all 
deal with mythology — gods and demi-gods. And here 
is a fine bit of verse which shows how well our old 
Norse cousins understood the feeling for "Home, 
Sweet Home": — 

"A homestead is best 
Though it be small; 
A man is master at home. 
Though he has but two goats 
And a straw-thatched roof, 
It is better far than begging." 

"Early should rise 
He who has few workers 
And go at once to his work ; 
Many things hinder 
Him who sleeps in the morning. 
Half one's wealth depends on activity." 

And, again, here is another bit of the same poem, 
celebrating the responsibilities of hospitality on the 
part of a man who does have a home. 



328 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

"Hail my host! 
A guest has come in ; 
Where shall he sit? 
In hot haste he 
Who has to try 
His luck on snow-shoes. 

Fire is needed 

By him who comes in 

Benumbed in his knees. 

Food and clothes 

Are needed by one 

Who has traveled over the mountain. 

Water is needed 

By the one 

Who comes to the meal, — 

A towel and hearty welcome, 

Good-will 

If he can get it; 

Talk and answer." 

This is, in brief, the conclusion of one poet's ob- 
servations — evidently it grew directly out of life ex- 
perience in a land of long winters: — 

"Fire is the best thing 
Among the sons of men; 
And the light of the sun; 
His good health 
If a man can keep it; 
And a blameless life." 

In this chapter we can only mention the Sagas, for 
they belong almost wholly to Iceland. They are of 
great importance to Norway, however, as much of 
early Norwegian history was written by the Icelanders. 
"The Sagas of the Norse Kings," by Snorri Sturlason 
is of especial interest and importance. It covers a 
period from the earliest times to the year 1177. It 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 329 

was written by a man who had a genius for the dram- 
atic presentation of events; it is one of the great 
history-books of the world. The lives of other Norse 
kings were written by other competent Icelandic his- 
torians, so that Norway, thanks mainly to the Ice- 
landers, has a comprehensive and reliable record of 
her ancient history. 

The period of greatest literary activity in Norway 
was during the epoch 850 to 1100. The two succeed- 
ing centuries were the greatest in Icelandic literary 
history. That is, these were the two principal creative 
periods of Old Norse literature. Much was done in 
Iceland after 1300, but nothing of vital importance 
in the way of original production. One of the great 
works of Old Norse literature was, however, written 
in Norway about the middle of the thirteenth century. 
It is of much cultural significance, as it gives a peep 
into many of the finer phases of civilization in ancient 
Norway. The author was a sort of Chesterfield of 
the thirteenth century, and undertakes, in the form of 
a dialogue between father and son, to give instruc- 
tion in morals and manners, and other useful knowl- 
edge. The title of the work. The King's Mirror, 
{Speculum Regale, in Latin), indicates that the work 
was intended quite as much for princes and kings, as 
for merchants and peasants. The work is the product 
of a well-disciplined man of much and varied expe- 
rience, and of good common-sense. It is worthy of 
being much better know^i even in Norway than it 
now is. 

The King's Mirror is a fitting conclusion to Nor- 
way's ancient literature. Something over a century 
afterwards Norway became united with Denmark, 
when, as we have shown in a previous chapter, the 
old Norse language as a literary language gradually 



330 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

went out of use, much as Anglo-Saxon in England 
began to decline as a result of the Norman invasion. 

The four centuries of the union with Denmark are 
the Dark Age of Norway's intellectual Hfe, due, no 
doubt, to some extent, to the stifling effect of the politi- 
cal situation, but quite as much to internal causes — 
a sort of disintegration of the national spirit after the 
devastating effects of the internecine wars of pre- 
vious centuries. But this age was not entirely one of 
darkness and intellectual stagnation. In spite of all 
that has been said against this period, historians are 
beginning to understand, as time goes on, that the 
national stagnation of the union-period had its 
recompenses. But for the isolation that the valleys 
of Norway experienced before the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, modern Norway might not have 
had anything of importance either in the way of folk- 
music or folk-Hterature, As it is, the folk-music and 
folk-literature of Norway far surpass those of Eng- 
land, France or Germany. Denmark and Sweden have 
a finer ballad literature than Norway, but Norway's 
folk-songs and folk-lore stories are superior to those 
of Denmark and Sweden. But for the preservation of 
Norway's folk-music, the characteristic Norwegian 
flavor and coloring of Edvard Grieg's modern com- 
positions would have been impossible. 

Before the great awakening that took place in Nor- 
way in 1814, there were very few literary men that 
lived and wrote in Norway. During the latter part 
of the seventeenth century, however, there lived in 
one of the northern provinces (Nordland) a Nor- 
wegian poet-priest by the name of Petter Dass, who 
broke the long silence by a work which he significantly 
called Nordlands Trompef. It was written in Danish 
and was for those times a spirited and pleasing de- 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 331 

scription in verse of home scenery, life and customs. 
It became immensely popular, and is, in fact, still a 
favorite with many old-fashioned readers. He wrote 
a large number of occasional poems, and also versified 
paraphrases of Bible history and Luther's Catechism. 
His works were not pubHshed until after his death 
(1708). During his Hfe they were circulated in manu- 
script copies.* 

After Petter Dass, Norway produced a litera-ry 
genius, Ludvig Holberg, whose work was of the very 
greatest importance in the development of Danish 
literature. He was reared in Norway, but lived and 
wrote in Copenhagen, where he became a professor at 
the university. He is called the father of modern Dan- 
ish literature. The great task that he took upon 
himself was to free the Danes from a paralyzing 
foreign influence in their intellectual life. This he 
did through his comedies. He was a man of great 
linguistic talent, broad learning, extensive travel, 
inimitable wit, and unusual good sense. His works are 
still read in Norway and Denmark with the keenest 
zest. He died in 1754 at the age of seventy. The 
square in Bergen (Holberg's birthplace), from which 
we look across to Valkendorf Tower (Position 52) 
was named for Holberg. 

Christian Tullin (1728-1765) was the second poet 
of any importance, who, during the union period, be- 
longed entirely to Norway. He lived in Christiania. 
He wrote lyric poems of a high order of merit. In 
fact, Dano-Norwegian lyric poetry begins with him. 

During the latter quarter of the eighteenth century 
there were many talented young Norwegians in 



* A lineal descendant of this poet, Dr. J. C. Dundas, came to America 
in the early '50's and settled in Cambridge, Wisconsin, near a large Nor- 
wegian settlement, where he practised medicine for about thirty years. 
He was a man of force and brains, a skilful physician, and was endowed 
with poetic gifts. He contributed many poems to the Norwegian press 
of this country. He died in 1883 at the age of sixty-eight. 



332 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Copenhagen. Norway had no university (the Uni- 
versity of Christiania was not estabhshed until 1811), 
and so these young men went to Copenhagen to study. 
Among them were a number who made their mark in 
Hterature. Johan Nordahl Brun wrote the first origi- 
nal tragedy that was played at the Copenhagen 
theatre ; but he was better known as a lyric poet than 
as a dramatist. He was the author of some ringing 
patriotic songs that are still sung. Later he became a 
famous preacher, in Bergen, and wrote some fine 
hymns. But the greatest of the Norwegian writers 
of this period was Johan Herman Wessel (1742-1785). 
In many respects he was a shiftless fellow, but he 
was highly gifted as a satirist, and won lasting fame 
by a comedy entitled Love Without Stockings, a bril- 
liant parody on the French tragedies much in vogue in 
Copenhagen at that time. 

The separation of Norway and Denmark came in 
1814, the result of political machinations during the 
Napoleonic wars. The Norwegians were prepared for 
the change, and wrote a free constitution that still is 
the fundamental law of the land. It has vouchsafed 
to Norway a democratic form of government second 
to none in the world. Under the circumstances it 
was but natural that Norway should develop along 
political, social and literary lines independent of Den- 
mark. During the first years after the separation, 
Norwegian poets sang of their new-found liberty with 
the bombastic exuberance of youth. Then, from 1830 
to 1840, there followed a period of fierce literary con- 
troversy between two intellectual giants, Wergeland 
and Welhaven, the former standing for Norwegian 
literary independence, and the latter urging the neces- 
sity of keeping up the intellectual ties with Denmark. 
Wergeland, Hke Bjornson, was an ardent patriot, a 
poet of the people, and a thoroughly democratic 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 333 

Spirit, while Welhaven, like Ibsen, was a keen and 
scathing critic, and a born aristocrat in spirit. But 
the clash between the two tendencies that they repre- 
sented did much to clear the air and pave the way 
for the new literature that was to come. Wergeland 
died in 1844, at the early age of thirty-six, but he was, 
nevertheless, one of the most prolific writers that the 
Scandinavian north has ever produced, and, withal, a 
genius of monumental proportions. Modern Norweg- 
ian literature begins with Henrik Wergeland. He is 
the first poet of the regenerated nation. And he is 
also the most significant personage in the generation 
that succeeded the adoption of the free constitution 
of 1814. He is not only the lark that ushers in the 
new day, but he appears also in the more prosy role 
of being the first to bare his arm for the work of pre- 
paring the common people for the new citizenship, 
and he succeeded in doing more than any other man 
in the way of banishing ignorance and superstition. 
For when he appeared on the scene, Norway was, as 
he says in one of his poems, "a neglected field, full of 
tares." Wergeland's name is not revered by the peo- 
ple of Norway on account of his greatest literary pro- 
ductions (poems like "The Swallow" and "The Flower 
Piece"), but for his lyrics, and especially for the fact 
that he was the enthusiastic and untiring teacher and 
guide of his people — a tocsin in the watch-tower of 
the new nation. 

One of Wergeland's best-known poems, "The Eng- 
lish Pilot," contains the following description of that 
beautiful country district of which we have a few 
glimpses when we visit Odde (Stereographs 39-41). 

"If a spot on earth be found 

Where, responsive to the alluring 
Voice of Nature, so beguiling, 



334 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Grief will cease to be enduring, 
Then that spot must be forever 
In fair, beautiful Hardanger. 

If there be a place so blest. 

Where from lonely, flower-clad valley 
Mountains rear their silvery crest 

Toward high heaven majestically; 
And where, from behind the screen 
Of a birch-wood may be seen 

Peeping out a cottage lowly, — 
O, where find you so much grace, 

Such exemption from all clangour. 
Such retreats, such peaceful ways. 
Say, where is there such a place 

But in beautiful Hardanger?" 

Welhaven's first poetical works were polemical, 
directed against his great contemporary. But later 
in life his poems were romantic and lyrical in tone 
and temper. He was a master of form ; there was in 
his smooth array of phrase almost painful accuracy in 
meter and diction. Some of his later poems are among 
the very finest products of Norwegian literary genius, 
and they are still widely read. Welhaven was born 
a century ago (1807) and died in 1873. He was for 
many years a professor in the University of 
Christiania. 

When the intellectual combat of the 30's, surcharged 
more or less with political ideas and aspirations, was 
waning, a new literary movement set in, known as 
national romanticism. Some scholars had found that 
the Norwegian peasantry was in possession of a 
seemingly inexhaustible fund of popular ballads and 
folk-lore stories. Competent literary men devoted 
themselves to garnering these rich treasures — and 
none too soon. Another generation might have been 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 335 

too late, for the railroad, telegraph and telephone are 
not conservers of such things. Here then were new 
themes for poet and artist, and they have been utilized 
to the fullest extent. 

The man who did the most to rescue ballad litera- 
ture was the minister and hymnologist, Magnus B. 
Landstad, while the two men who applied themselves 
to the collecting of folk-lore stories were P. C. 
Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe. They did a great cul- 
tural work for the country in a most masterful way. 
It required good judgment, indefatigable zeal, and 
great literary discernment and skill to select and 
properly present these stories. The measure of their 
success may be indicated by the fact that the great 
German folk-lorist, Jacob Grimm, once declared that 
the Norwegian stories collected by Asbjornsen and 
Moe were the best folk-lore stories in the world. They 
are well known to English and American readers, as 
most of them have been translated. ( See the last 
chapter for references.) 

In connection with the interest in ballads and folk- 
lore stories there was an intense interest in Nor- 
wegian scenery and popular life in general. This 
romantic movement lasted until about 1870 (which 
date marks the advent of modern realism), and found 
its best expression in Bjornson's peasant stories, of 
which we shall speak later. 

We have tried in the foregoing to say something to 
indicate the early movements in Norwegian literature, 
without attempting anything comprehensive. We 
have felt compelled to pass over the discussion of such 
important names as P. A. Munch, the author of a 
great work on Norwegian history, an original in- 
vestigator of marvelous ability and attainments; 
Camilla Collett, the sister of Henrik Wergeland, a fine 



336 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

writer, and the first champion of woman's rights in 
Norway; Ivar Aasen (whom we have spoken of as a 
philologist), the first poet to write in the peasant lan- 
guage or Landsmaal; and Aasmund O. Vinje, who, 
like Aasen, wrote mainly in Landsmaal. As a poet 
Vinje was more gifted than Aasen. He had a full 
vein of grim Norse humor, and was strikingly origi- 
nal and erratic. Some of his poems are among the 
finest gems of Norwegian literature. 

The two greatest names of modern Norwegian 
literature are, of course, Henrik Ibsen and Bjorn- 
stjerne Bjornson. We shall tell something of the 
lives of these intellectual giants, but there are others 
that deserve mention. In fact, modern Norway has 
produced a host of writers, several of whom would 
have been more conspicuous in the eyes of the world 
but for the overshadowing influence of Ibsen and 
Bjornson. There is Jonas Lie, born in 1833, only a 
year younger than Bjornson, a most prolific novelist, 
who has long held high rank. His first book The 
Visionary, or more correctly translated. The Man of 
Second Sight, was a mature story and won immediate 
success. The scene is laid in a region at that time 
new to literature, the mystic nature of the melan- 
choly north — the arctic world of northern Norway. 
The Pilot and His Wife is the one of his novels best 
known to American readers. The list of his works is 
a long one. He is now an old man, but has not yet 
dropped his pen. Alexander Kielland, the second 
great modern novelist, was more brilliant than Lie 
His first novelettes (1879) attracted immediate atten- 
tion, on account of their elegant diction; they showed 
him a skilled artist, and novel upon novel, picturing 
phases of modern life, followed in quick succession. 
His Skipper Worse (1882), a study in the psychology 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 337 

of fanaticism, is possibly the best-told story in Nor- 
wegian literature. Some of his novelettes have been 
translated by William Archer in a volume entitled 
Tales of Two Countries. Skipper Worse has been 
published in England, but not in this country. Kiel- 
land died in April, 1906. 

Arne Garborg, too, is a writer of commanding im- 
portance. Garborg was born in 1851, the son of a 
very pietistic peasant. He is the greatest living repre- 
sentative of the Landsmaal movement, and has written 
mainly in that language, although he writes equally 
well in Dano-Norwegian. He is a literary artist of 
great skill. It is not too much to say that he has 
shown a wider range of power than any of the other 
great writers of Norway. He not only is a creative 
artist with vivid fancy, but he has the critical and con- 
troversial faculty in equally high degree. In a com- 
paratively few years he has run the gamut of all the prin- 
cipal phases of our complicated modern literary move- 
ments from romanticism to mysticism. His principal 
works are stories and novels, but one of them, Haug- 
tussa (1895), a story in verse, is a work of such lyric 
loveliness that it places Garborg worthily by the side 
of Bjornson as a poet. Indeed, as a creative artist 
and an intellectual force, he ranks with Ibsen, Bjorn- 
son, Lie and Kielland. In recent years Garborg has 
taken to religious speculation, much in the manner of 
Tolstoi. His last work, published in 1906, is entitled 
Jesus Messias. 

And now we must turn again to Ibsen and Bjorn- 
son, the two men who have done more than all others 
to make the name of Norway honored and respected 
abroad. They are not only great as Norwegians, but 
also in a cosmopolitan sense. In the realm of creative 
literature they rank with the greatest minds of the 



338 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

nineteenth century. Some critics place Ibsen's dramas 
at the very head of all Europe's creative literature of 
the last century. 

Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien, down in southern 
Norway, in 1828. At the slge of sixteen, he left his 
home to shift for himself. His father had once been 
a prosperous merchant, but reverses came when the 
son was eight years of age. It was young Ibsen's 
ambition to be a painter, but stern necessity landed 
him in an apothecary shop in a small seaport town 
in southern Norway. Here he remained five years, 
during which time he won some local fame as a writer 
of verse, and produced his first drama, Catilina, based 
on his studies in Latin. In 1850, at the age of twenty- 
two, he went up to Christiania, intending to study 
medicine. While preparing for the university exam- 
inations, he wrote a drama in the romantic vein, which 
was accepted by the Christiania theatre. After hav- 
ing passed the university examinations he decided not 
to become a student, but entered journalism instead. 
In Christiania he had made the acquaintance of Ole 
Bull, and in 1851 he was called to Bergen as artistic 
director of Ole Bull's theatre. In this position he 
remained until 1857, during which time he wrote five 
dramas. In 1858, after his return to Christiania to 
take charge of the theatre, he wrote an historical 
drama called The Warriors of Helgeland, an excellent 
piece of dramatic composition, indicative of the seri- 
ous literary work he had done while in Bergen. The 
language of it was direct and pithy as that of an old 
Norse saga, instinct with rugged and virile strength. 
The public was, however, not prepared for the ap- 
preciation of such a dramatic masterpiece. Bjornson's 
peasant stories were more to their liking. Although 
a younger man, Bjornson was the first to win public 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 339 

recognition. Not even Ibsen's two succeeding works, 
Love's Comedy (1862) and The Pretenders (1864), 
both of a high order of literary merit, gave him either 
reputation or a Hvelihood. His prospects seemed 
dark indeed. He felt that if he was to continue in a 
literary career it was necessary for him to get away 
from Norway and see the great, wide world, so as to 
get new impulses. Conscious of his own artistic 
powers, he applied to the government for a traveling 
stipend, and this, after much opposition, was finally 
granted in 1864, whereupon he began that period of 
voluntary exile that continued, with the exception of 
two brief visits, until 1891; then he returned to 
Christiania, where he remained until his death, in 
May, 1906. 

The years of Ibsen's long sojourn abroad were spent 
mainly in Italy and Germany. He first went to Rome, 
where he was pinched with poverty. But during these 
months of spiritual struggle he wrote one of his 
greatest works, namely, Brand. Soon after its publi- 
cation he felt the need of further financial aid, in order 
to continue his literary work. In dire distress he 
petitioned the king of Norway and Sweden ; in his 
letter he tells something of the aim of his life : — 

"It is not for a care-free existence I am fight- 
ing, but for the possibility of devoting myself 
to the task which I believe and know has been 
laid upon me by God — the work which seems to 
me more needful and important in Norway than 
any other, that of arousing the nation and leading 
it to think great thoughts." 

His first notable successes were Brand (published 
in 1866) and Peer Gynt (1867), both dramatic studies 
of universal import, cast in vigorous and original 
])oetic form. Critics, indeed, were by no means agreed 
in recognizing the poetic quality of his work, but con- 



340 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

cerning Peer Gynt he wrote to Bjornson, undismayed 
by the disapproval of conservatives : — 

''My book is poetry. If it is not, then it will 
be. The conception of poetry shall be made to 
conform to the book. . . . I will and shall 
have a victory some day." 

As he explained in another of his letters, recently 
pubHshed (in 1905) :— 

"Most critical fault finding, when reduced to 
its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the 
author, because he is himself — thinks, feels, sees 
and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and 
creating in the way the critic would have done — 
if he had been able. The great thing, therefore, 
is to hedge about what is one's own — to keep it 
free and clear from everything outside that has 
no connection with it; and, furthermore, to be 
extremely careful in discriminating between what 
one has observed and what one has experienced, 
because only this last can be the theme for 
creative work. If we attend strictly to this, no 
everyday, commonplace subject will be too prosaic 
to be sublimated into poetry." 

A number of dramas written previous to the suc- 
cess of Brand and Peer Gynt have since gained a 
wide reading, notably The Banquet at Solhaug; Mis- 
tress Inger at Ostraat; The Warriors at Helgeland; 
Love's Comedy, and The Pretenders. The best known 
of his works were written after the production of 
Brand and Peer Gynt, and, as were these, during a 
long absence on the continent. Emperor and Galilean, 
published in 1873, was the outgrowth of study and re- 
search in Italy, but the social plays (written in prose) 
take their themes from contemporary Norse life, and 
together constitute a masterly study of human nature. 
The titles and dates of his social dramas in prose are : — 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 341 

The Young Mens Union, (1869) 

Pillars of Society, (1877) 

A Doll's House, (1879) 

Ghosts, (1881) 

An Enemy of the People, . (1882) 

The Wild Duck, (1884) 

Rosmersholm, (1886) 

The Lady from the Sea, (1888) 

Hedda G abler, (1890) 

Architect Solness, (1892) 

Little Eyolf, (1894) 

John Gabriel Borkman, (1896) 

When We Dead Awake, (1899) 

The editors of Ibsen's Letters, published during 
the last year of the author's life, say : — "The degree in 
which Ibsen has impressed himself on the national 
consciousness as an artistic and intellectual power has 
varied very much in different countries. But a poet 
of world-wide fame he has undoubtedly become at 
last — the Norwegian author whose struggle was at 
first such a hard one." 

Many people have been deterred from giving re- 
spectful consideration to Ibsen on account of the 
sweeping denunciation that he so often has been sub- 
jected to. And this is not strange ; for, as a rule, great 
and original genius, especially in literature, is recog- 
nized and respected only after a desperate struggle. 
Ibsen had more than one such struggle. And surely 
no other author was ever so well equipped to bear 
opposition. Adversity never succeeded in cowing him. 
In the matter of opposition he fared as badly at 
home as abroad. But the attitude of the public grad- 
ually changed. When Ibsen, on the 20th of March, 
1898, celebrated his seventieth birthday, he received 
such homage from both countrymen and foreigners 
as no writer ever before or since has received. The 
occasion gave ample evidence of the fact that as a 



342 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

poet, as a literary and dramatic artist, and as a man, 
he had attained eminent distinction. 

Bjornstjerne Bjornson is not the greatest poet that 
Norway has produced; in certain Hnes of literary 
activity Ibsen far surpassed him. Henrik Wergeland 
was a greater genius than either, but the wings of his 
poetic fancy too often carried him into ethereal realms, 
where it was possible for but few to follow. Werge- 
land is often called "the poet of liberty," and he earned 
the title. Bjornson is in a peculiar sense the intel- 
lectual child of Wergeland. And yet Bjornson, not 
Wergeland, is the national poet, and in a deeper and 
truer sense than most national poets. As a young man 
he wrote a national hymn that superseded all the 
older ones ; it is one of the finest national songs in 
the world, and everybody in Norway is familiar with 
its ringing words. He has written many other poems 
to fire the patriotic spirit of his people. To promote 
their welfare he has unweariedly applied all the powers 
of his great genius. 

Four hundred years of foreign rule left its mark on 
the Norwegian people. The efforts of patriotic poets, 
historians and statesmen of the nineteenth century 
were to arouse the people to a realization of the in- 
dependent national life of old, and, on the basis of 
this awakened consciousness, to build a new national 
life — in politics, in literature, in music and in art. 
And these efforts bore a golden harvest; national in- 
dependence, a free constitution, no nobility, freedom 
of the press, free schools, an enlightened and patriotic 
people — these are the achievements of less than a 
century. As a result there is a vigor, charm and "open- 
eyed modernness" about Norway's intellectual life that 
has attracted the attention of the world. It reads her 
literature, plays her music, appreciates her art, and 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 343 

approves her politics. As William Archer of Eng- 
land has said: — "It is surely no hyperbole to describe 
as marvellous the spiritual efflorescence which, from 
the small beginnings of national life in 1814, has pro- 
duced the Norway of to-day." 

No one man has contributed more toward this glad 
consummation than Bjornson. He has not been a 
mere poet and dreamer. He thinks it useless to have 
high and noble ideals unless we seek to put them into 
practice. This he has conscientiously and persistently 
sought to do. He has not held himself aloof from 
the people. He has personally, with tongue and pen, 
taken conspicuous part in every political, social and 
literary combat of his times — and they have been fierce 
and numerous. Through his ardent advocacy of re- 
form movements he has brought upon himself the 
wrath of many, but the gratitude of more. Impelled 
by a spirit of rugged manliness, and in spite of the 
evil prophecies of his opponents, Bjornson has gone 
steadily on, and to-day his crown of fame shines with 
brighter lustre than ever before. There can be no 
better proof of this than the honor that was shown 
him both at home and abroad in December, 1902, on 
the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of his birth. 
There were carping critics here and there, and the 
clergy, in view of his attitude toward the church, 
maintained a dignified silence ; but considering the 
numerous and vehement combats in which he has been 
engaged, the ail-but unanimous sentiments of recog- 
nition and good-will were phenomenal, and touched 
the old poet deeply. 

It is in Bjornson's oratory that all the great powers 
of his richly endowed nature have most strikingly re- 
vealed themselves. He has more of the qualities that 
go to make a great orator than any man living. He 



344 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

has the gift of speech, the voice, the personality and 
address, the magnetic power, the originaUty of pres- 
entation, and a fund of earnest and forceful thought 
that mark the great orator. In addition to these rare 
qualities, he is a born actor, a lyric poet, a novelist, 
a dramatist — talents that enhance and illumine his 
oratorical gifts. Pleading the cause of truth and jus- 
tice before a large audience, he is irresistible. Born 
and reared in a small country, speaking a language 
that is understood by but few, his oratorical powers 
have not had adequate scope for their greatest possi- 
bilities. If he had had the great questions to grapple 
with that Webster and Lincoln had, he would doubt- 
less have been known to the world as an orator, rather 
than as a poet. But he has used well the opportunities 
that his nation has presented. There are but few of 
his countrymen that have not been stirred by his 
mighty eloquence. 

Bjornson was born December 8, 1832, in Kvikne 
parish, in Osterdal, a valley in eastern Norway. Most 
of his childhood was spent in Romsdal, in the west- 
ern part of the country. He went to school at Molde, 
and later studied at the University of Christiania. 
But, as had been the case with Ibsen, he soon gave up 
his studies and entered actively into journaHsm, where 
he made his influence distinctly felt. From the early 
'50's to the present time he has been a constant con- 
tributor to the daily press; the amount of his work 
in the journalistic field is enormous. At different 
times he has edited papers in both Christiania and 
Bergen. He has also been director of the theatres 
in both of these cities. 

Even before he began to write for the newspapers, 
Bjornson had begun to write short stories. His first 
novel, Synnove Solhakken, appeared in 1857, and 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 345 

proved epoch-making in Scandinavian literature. Its 
theme was the simplest thing in the world, the de- 
velopment of a raw, rough country boy into a man and 
the part played by love in his transformation. Two 
other peasant stories followed, now widely known both 
in the original and in translations: Arne (1858), and 
A Happy Boy (1860). These stories brought the 
thoughts and aspirations of the Norwegian peasantry 
into literature. Possibly more than anything else 
literary, they have been a source of pleasure and 
profit to the Norwegian people. Peasants have read 
them and have learned to know their better selves. 
City folk have read them and have learned to know 
the peasants, and to appreciate the fact that under 
the coarse homespun of the peasant there may be a 
heart that beats warmly for the high and noble things 
of life. Thus a distinct and beneficent result has been 
wrought by these simple tales. 

Edmund Gosse, the English critic, has said of 
them : — 

"Through these little romances there blows a 
wind as fragrant and refreshing as the odor of 
the Trondhjem balsam willows blown out to sea 
to welcome the new comer; and just as this rare 
scent is the first thing that tells the traveler of 
Norway, so the purity of Bjornson's novelettes 
is usually the first thing to attract a foreigner to 
Norwegian literature.'' 

Bjornson's later novels are mostly studies of the 
somber and tragic aspects of life. They deal with 
the great questions of education, religion and public 
and domestic duties. He discusses these modern 
themes, not to satisfy a cynical frame of mind, but to 
enlighten, rectify and improve. Here is a list of 
them : — 



346 



NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



The Fisher Maiden, 


(1868) 


Magnhild, 


(1877) 


Captain Mansana, 


(1879) 


Dust, 


(1882) 


Flags are Flying in City and Harbor, 


, (1884) 


In the Paths of God, 


(1886) 


Absalom's Hair, 


(1894) 


Mary, 


(1906) 



Painful as certain of these stories are in the read- 
ing, their essential nobility of spirit is always evident. 
Bjornson loves his country as few other Norsemen 
have ever loved it, and, when he pictures drearily or 
sordidly evil conditions in Norwegian society, he does 
it not merely as an artist, concerned only with the 
technique of his own work, but as a surgeon, laboring 
to further, by means of fine technique, a needed 
amelioration of the facts. 

The same statement holds with certain of his pub- 
lished plays, though these do not all deal with con- 
temporary life in Norway. Several are historic, tak- 
ing their themes from the heroic traditions of old 
Norse Sagas. Comparatively few of the dramas are 
readily accessible in English. The order of their pro- 
duction has been as follows: — 



Between the Battles, 


(1857) 


Lame Hulda, 


(1858) 


King Sverre, 


(1861) 


Sigurd Slembe, 


(1862) 


Mary Stuart in Scotland, 


(1864) 


The Newly Married, 


(1865) 


Sigurd Jorsalfar, 


(1873) 


The Editor 


(1875) 


Bankruptcy 


(1875) 


The King, 


(1877) 


Leonarda, 


(1879) 


The New System 


(1879) 


A Gauntlet, 


(1883) 


Over TEvne, 


(1883) 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 347 

Love and Geography, (1885) 

Over ^vne II, (1895) 

Labor emus, (1901) 

At Storhove, (1902) 

It is perhaps Bjornson's verse that most endears 
him to his own people. There are some charming 
lyrics set in his country story of Arne. This is one 
of them : — 

"Through the forest the boy wends all day long 
For there he has heard such a wonderful song ; 

He carved him a flute of the willow tree 
And tried what the tune within it might be. 

The tune came out of it, sad and gay, 
But while he listened, it passed away. 

He fell asleep and once more it sung, 
And over his forehead it lovingly hung. 

He thought he would catch it, and wildly woke, 
And the tune in the pale night faded and broke. 

*0, God, my God, take me up to Thee, 

For the tune Thou hast made is consuming me. 

And the Lord God said, * 'Tis a friend divine ; 
Though never one hour shalt thou hold it thine, 

Yet all other music is poor and thin 

By the side of this which thou never shalt win.' " 



Others of his works in verse are household words 
among well educated Norse people, just like Long- 
fellow's poems in American households ; unfortunately 
not many of them have been translated into English. 
This fragment is quite characteristic: — 



348 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

" 'Tis April tunes my lyre ! 
Then all that's old is falling; 
The new life loud is calling, — 
Who heeds the storm and clatter? 
Than peace there's something better, — 

The ardor of desire !" 

The author once said of himself and his verses: — 

"People have a notion that a poet is a long- 
haired man, who sits on the top of a tower and 
plays upon a harp, while his hair streams in the 
wind. A fine kind of poet is that! No — I am a 
poet not primarily because I can write verse 
(there are lots of people who can do that), but 
by virtue of seeing more clearly and feeling more 
truly than the majority of men. All that con- 
cerns humanity concerns me." 

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, who was a personal friend 
and great admirer of Bjornson, said in his Essays on 
Scandinavian Lit era ture : — 

"Bjornstjerne Bjornson is the first Norwegian 
poet who can in any sense be called national. 
The national genius, with its limitations as well 
as its virtues, has found its living embodiment in 
him. Whenever he opens his mouth, it is as 
if the nation itself were speaking. . . . His 
tales, romances and dramas express collectively 
the supreme result of the nation's experiences, so 
that no one to-day can view Norwegian life or 
Norwegian history except through their medium." 

Bjornson's home, Aulestad, in Gausdal, a valley in 
eastern Norway, is one of the finest estates in the 
country. It has become so through the inspirational 
idealism of the poet and the practical energy of his 
son Erling. Forty years ago the father wrote in a 
poem: — "Every acre that we add to our fields, every 
ship that we launch on the sea, every child's soul that 
we unfold, every illuminating thought that we ex- 



NORWEGIAN LITERATURE 349 

press, every deed that augments and preserves, is an 
added province to our domain — the staunch vanguard 
of our freedom." This he has preached, and this he 
has practised. Thirty years ago he bought the farm 
Aulestad, beautifully situated on the mountain-side, 
with a grand view of the broad valley below; but it 
was covered with copse and stones. He resolved to 
make it productive and beautiful — a model farm and 
home. When the peasants saw how perseveringly 
his laborers worked year after year, hauling away 
stones, they shook their heads and wondered if it 
would pay, conceding, however, that he was himself 
practising what he had been preaching in his poems 
and in his speeches. 

At the turn of the century, after years of well- 
directed effort, all possibilities for the improvement of 
the estate seemed to have been realized. The peasants 
wondered what the poet now would do. But father 
and son continued to dream and plan and work. 
Across one edge of the farm flowed a little mountain 
stream. Where it shot over a slight precipice, it had 
served as a much-used shower bath. But the thought 
occurred to the poet that possibly this seemingly in- 
significant stream, which had murmured and rippled 
down the mountain-side for thousands of years, was 
like the spade and ax and nut in the Norwegian folk- 
lore story that were ''waiting for you" — opportunity 
waiting for the man. 

The first thought was the important thing. The 
rest was easy enough. Three years afterwards the 
noisy brook was transformed into electric light, so 
that Aulestad at night seems now like a fairyland to 
the wondering peasants. 

But this is not all. Besides furnishing a flood of 
light for the houses and barns and stables, and an 



350 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

arc light for the courtyard, this stream now furnishes 
the power for threshing the grain, and grinding feed 
for the whole neighborhood; it saws all the wood for 
the farm, and, moreover, cuts and planes all the lum- 
ber needed at Aulestad and in the whole surrounding 
district. It was not strange that the peasants had 
wondered at the possibilities of this brook, which had 
been simply humming and singing for centuries "and 
thinking of everything and nothing/' 

The practical American needs not to be told of the 
work and money necessary to bring about such fine 
results. He will immediately suspect that there is 
a good head of water in some adjacent mountain 
lake. But this needed to be dammed up, so that the 
supply could be regulated. The course of the stream 
had to be changed, so as to obtain an effective fall. 
The practical American also knows that all this labor 
and expense would make costly light for one farm, 
which was the first object of the enterprise, so that 
the next step was to make the plant a direct source 
of income by serving the public. 

Can any one doubt that this dreaming, yet in- 
tensely practical poet, is an inspiration to his country- 
men? And is it strange that a modern poet is con- 
tent to live in the country under such conditions? "I 
am never so happy," he says, "as when, after having 
been abroad for a season, I return to Aulestad. To 
me it is the finest place in the world. There, and only 
there, I feel at home." 

Aulestad is one of the best-known places in Nor- 
way. It is annually visited by hundreds of sight- 
seers and tourists from all parts of the world, and 
Bjornson, in good old Norwegian fashion, dispenses 
generous hospitality to all. 



BOOKS TO READ 

The following bibliography is intentionally incom- 
plete, the works mentioned being only such as will be 
found most accessible and interesting to American and 
English readers. 

A great many desirable works, familiar to Norweg- 
ians at home, are necessarily omitted here, not being 
obtainable in English translation. 

Topography and Statistics 

Konow and Fischer: Norway. 

(Prepared by Government authority on the oc- 
casion of the Paris Exposition in 1900. A mine 
of authentic information about country and peo- 
pie.) 

Baedeker : Norway, Sweden and Denmark. 

(Reliable guidebook much used by tourists.) 
Bennett : Handbook for Travelers in Norway. 

(A reliable guidebook.) 
Murray : Norway. 

(A reliable guidebook.) 
J. D. Forbes: Norway and its Glaciers. 

(A scientific study, interesting to students of 

geology.) 

W. C. Slingsby: Norway, the Mountain Playground, 
(Devoted to records of mountain climbing.) 

Archaeology 

P. B. Du Chaillu: The Viking Age. 

(A study of the life, manners and customs of 
mediaeval Norway.) 



352 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Montelius (Wood's Translation) : The Civilisation 
of Sweden in Heathen Times. 

(Applies in a general way to Norway and 
Sweden.) 

Rendall: The Cradle of the Aryans. 

(A discussion of Penka's theory of Scandinavia 
as the home of the Aryans.) 

Rhys: Race Theories (in New Princeton Reviezv, 
January, 1888.) 

(An enthusiastic article on Penka's theory.) 

Huxley: .The Aryan Question and Pre-historic Man. 
Collected Essays, Vol. VII. 

(An unbiased treatment of modern phases of the 
Aryan Question.) 

Travel and Description 

J. B. Putnam : A Norwegian Ramble. 

(An unpretentious but pleasant and readable ac- 
count of summer journeyings through the most 
frequented districts.) 

E. B. Tweedie: A Winter Jaunt to Norway. 

(Vivacious and graphic descriptions of cold- 
weather travel, visiting famous Norwegians, etc., 
etc.) 

A. F. M. Ferryman : In the Northman's Land. 

(Attractive and entertaining, with special em- 
phasis on Norwegian hunting and fishing and 
many references to local folk-lore — fairy tales, 
legends and ghost stories. 

E. J. Goodman: The Best Tour in Norzvay. 

(Well worth reading. It tells about visits to 
many of the places we ourselves see.) 

Same Author: New Ground in Norway. 

(Devoted to the southern provinces. Particularly 
interesting in connection with several of the 
places visited in our own tour.) 

J. R. Campbell: How to See Norzvay. 

(Covers the usual tourist route in a readable 
way.) 



BOOKS TO READ 353 

J. D. Caton: A Summer in Norzvay. 

(Written thirty years ago, but most of its ob- 
servations still of interest.) 

Abel Chapman: Wild Norway. 

(Of great interest to a sportsman, though not 
specially valuable for the general reader.) 

C. W. Wood: Round About Norway. 

(Touches on experiences in several of the places 
which we visit.) 

S. H. Kent: Within the Arctic Circle. 

(Includes some interesting accounts of camp life 
near the North Cape.) 

O. M. Stone : Norway in June. 

(Full of interesting accounts of local customs, 
but written a generation ago; some customs have 
changed.) 

Nico and Beatrice Jungman: Norway. 

(Account of an artist's recent travels. Illustra- 
tions in color, giving a good idea of local cos- 
tumes, etc.) 

Bayard Taylor: Northern Travel. 

(Written many years ago by one of the first 
Americans who traveled here. Descriptions of 
natural scenery are among the best yet written. 
Criticisms passed on the people are in many cases 
no longer applicable.) 

P. B. Du Chaillu : The Land of the Midnight Sun. 
(Written many years ago and still considered 
excellent, especially in relation to the far north.) 

F. Vincent: Norsk, Lapp and Finn. 

(Entertaining. Includes much general informa- 
tion.) 

M. M. Ballou : Due North. 

(Attractive in its descriptions of places and per- 
sonal experiences.) 

S. M. H. Davis: Norway Nights and Russian Days. 
(Makes interesting mention of many places seen 
in our own tour.) 



354 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

E. B. Kennedy : Thirty Seasons in Scandinavia. 

(Records of a sportsman, accounts of hunting, 
fishing, etc.) 

A. E. Spender: Two Winters in Norway. 

( Devoted largely to accounts of ski-running, hunt- 
ing and other winter sports.) 

C. L. Brace: The Norse Folk. 

(Written many years ago and still interesting, 
though some comments on manners and customs 
no longer hold good.) 

T. S. Steele : A Voyage to Viking Land. 

(Impressions of a brief summer journey, includ- 
ing mention of several places in our own tour.) 

C. W. Wood: Norwegian Byzvays. 

(Clever descriptions of landscape effects, inter- 
woven with casual conversation among tourists 
and Norwegians whom they meet.) 



History 

H. H. Boyesen : The Story of Norzvay. 
(Picturesque, dramatic and readable.) 

Thomas Carlyle: Early Kings of Norzvay. 

(Admirable, and considered good authority.) 

C. F. Keary: Norway and the Norwegians. 

(Contains much reliable information.) 

The Vikings in Western Christendom. 

(Excellent as a study of Norse influence on the 

rest of the world.) 
E. A. Freeman : History of the Norman Conquest of 
England. 

(A standard authority on the subject, very 

scholarly and full.) 

J. R. Green : Short History of the English People. 
(The chapters on the Norman Conquest are ex- 
ceedingly valuable.) 

S. O. Jewett: The Story of the Normans. 
(A popular history, pleasant in style.) 



BOOKS TO READ 355 

Helen Zimmern : The Hansa Towns. 

(The chapter on Bergen, though dealing with 
German traders there rather than with the natives 
themselves, is intensely interesting in this con- 
nection.) 

Biography 

Sara C. Bull: Life of Ole Bull. 

(Written by the wife of the great violinist of 
world-wide fame.) 

Henrik Ibsen : Letters. 

(Interesting to those who have studied the 
author's works, as giving valuable light on his 
temperament and life experience ) 

A. J. Bain: Fridtjof Nansen, His Life and Ex- 
plorations. 

(All about the celebrated Arctic voyager.) 

Finck : Edvard Grieg. 

(An enthusiastic and competer/t estimate of the 
Norwegian composer.) 

Religion 

(None of the books under this heading, except 
Bugge's and Vigusson and Powell's, discuss any of 
the modern phases of Norse mythology.) 

Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, chapter on "The 
Hero as Divinity." 

(Masterly in its sympathetic understanding of 
the subject and admirably characteristic of the 
author's rugged style.) 

R. B. Anderson: Norse Mythology. 

(An excellent authority on the whole subject.) 

P. H. Mallet: Northern Antiquities. 
(A standard work on the subject.) 

H. W. Mabie: Norse Stories Retold. 

(Includes stories of the old gods, put into spe- 
cially readable form.) 



356 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

P. B. Du Chaillu : The Viking Age. 

(Gives many long extracts from the ancient 
Eddas, embodying the old pagan faith.) 

F. Kauffmann (translated by M. Steele Smith) : 
Northern Mythology. 
(A brief but interesting handbook.) 

Vigfusson and Powell: Corpus Poeticum Boreale. 
(Contains a translation of all old Norse poems, 
including the Elder Edda; it is scholarly and 
comprehensive. The work is expensive, but will 
be found in the best libraries.) 

Guerber: Myths of Northern Lands. 

(Not comprehensive, but very readable.) 

S. Bugge (translated by W. H. Schofield) : The 
Home of the Eddie Poems. 

Stories of Norse life by Norse writers 

Jonas Lie : The Pilot and His Wife. 
Little Grey. 
The Visionary. 
Weird Tales from Northern Seas. 

Bjornstjerne Bjornson: Synnove Solhakken. 

Arne. 

The Fisher Maiden. 
A Happy Boy. 
The Railway and the 

Churchyard. 
The Bridal March. 
In God's Way. 
Magnhild. 
Absalom's Hair. 

Hjaimar Hjorth Boyesen: Gunnar. 

The Modern Vikings-, 
A Norse Boyhood. 
Falconberg. 

(This last is a story of Norse people, not in Nor- 
way, but in a village in Minnesota.) 



BOOKS TO READ 357 



Kristofer Janson: The Spell-hound Fiddler. 

P. C. Asbjornsen: Popular Tales from the North. 
Round the Yule Log. 
Tales from the Fjeld. 



Norse stories told by foreign authors 

E. Tegner : Fridthjofs Saga. 

P. B. Du Chaillu : Ivar the Viking. 

R. M. Ballantyne: Erling the Bold. 

S. Baring-Gould: Grettir the Outlaw. 

H. W. Longfellow : The Saga of King Olaf. 

William Morris: The Story of Sigurd the Volsung 

(in verse). 

H. Martineau: Feats on the Fjord. 



Dramas based on Norse character 
and life 

Henrik Ibsen: Brand. 

Peer Gynf. 

Pillars of Society. 

Love's Comedy. 

A Doll's House, 

Ghosts. 

An Enemy of the People. 

The Wild Duck. 

Rosmersholm. 

The Lady from the Sea. 

Hedda Gabler. 

The Master Builder. 

Little Eyolf. 

John Gabriel Borkman. 

When We Dead Awake. 



358 NORWAY THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Bjornstjerne Bjornson's dramas are unfortunately 
almost entirely inaccessible for those who read 
only English. Translations are obtainable for 
Sigurd Slemhe, 

Over ^vne (called in the London version Pastor 
Sang.) 

Literary Criticism 

Horn : History of Scandinavian Literature. 
G. Brandes: Modern Scandinavian Literature. 
C. F. Keary: Norway and the Norwegians (special 
chapter.) 

Konow and Fischer: Norway (special chapter). 

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen: Essays on Scandinavian 
Literature. 

(Contains excellent biographical and literary es- 
says on Bjornson, Lie and Kielland.) 

A Commentary on the 
Writings of Henrik Ibsen. 

Edmund Gosse : Northern Studies. 

Exploration 

Fridtjof Nansen: Farthest North. 

For Boys and Girls 

P. C. Asbjornsen: Tales from the Fjeld. 

(Fairy tales and stories of luck and pluck.) 

Fairy Tales from the North. 

(Stories of adventures with giants, goblins, etc.) 

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen: Against Heavy Odds. 
(How a Norwegian boy with a genius for in- 
vention gained a victory over a powerful enemy.) 
A Fearless Trio. 

(Three Norse lads and their scheme for restoring 
the family fortunes.) 
The Modern Vikings. 



BOOKS TO BEAD 359 

(Stories of adventure and fun among Norweg- 
ian boys.) 
A Norse Boyhood. 

(All about the life of young folks in Norway.) 
N or s eland Tales. 

P. B. Du Chaillu : The Land of the Long Nights. 
(About life in Norway and real Norwegian peo- 
ple whom the author knew.) 

Language 

Julius E. Olson: Norwegian Grammar and Reader. 
( Contains many selections for reading, with notes 
and vocabulary.) 

George T. Flom: Bjornson's Synnove Solbakken. 
(Contains — in English — an interesting biography 
of the poet, and copious notes and a vocabulary 
for the story in the original text.) 



360 PRONUNCIATION OF NORWEGIAN WORDS 



Pronunciation of Norwegian words and 
phrases used in this handbook 

Bonde — ''Boon'-ne"; the o as oo in ''good"; d after n is 
silent. 

Brudefolge — "Broo'-de-fol-ge"; o as ti in ''fur", but short- 
er; g in "ge" is hard as in "go". 

Dag-bog — "Dag'-bog"; the a as in "father"; the o as in 
"gore". 

Firring — "Fear'-ring"; both vowels are short, and r's 

trilled. 
Fladbrod— "Flad'-brod"; a as in "father"; o as u in "fur". 
Froken — "Fro'-ken"; o as u in "fur". 
Fuldt af iisk— "Foolt ov fisk"; u as oo in "foot". 

Gaard— "Gore'-; with trilled r. 

Gammelost — "Gam'-niel-oost"; a as in "father", but 

shorter. 
God morn — "Goo-morn'". 
Grod— "Grud"; u as in "fur". 

Halv fire— "Hall-fee'-re". 

Jsegte— "Yekk'-te". 

Jokel— "Yok'-kel"; o as e in "her". 

Jotun— "Yo'-tune". 

Kariol— "Car-yole"'; a as in "father". 
Kilenoter — "CheeMe-no-ter"; no as French ne. 
Krone— "Croo'-ne". 
Kroner — ' ' Croo'-ner ' ' . 

Lagthing — "Lag'-ting"; a as in "father". 

Lur— "Loor". 

Lille— "Lill-le". 

Lykkelig reise — "Lvkk'-ke-li ray'-se"; 5 is always sharp. 

Mange tak~"Mang'-e tak'"; ng as in "sing"; a as in 
"father". 



PRONUNCIATION OF NORWEGIAN NAMES 361 

Multebaer — **Mool'-te-bare", with trilled r, as always. 
Mysost — ''Mys'-oost*'; y as German U, or French u. 
Odelsthing— " Oo'-dels-ting". 

Or^-''0'-re"; o as in ''fur". 

Pultost— ^'Poolt'-ocst". 

Rommegrod — ''Rom'-me-grod"; o as in ''fur". 
Rorskarl— 'a<oors'-karl ". 

Saeter— ''Say'-ter". 

Saga — ''Sa'-ga"; a as in "father". 

Sei— ''Say". 

Sexing — ''Sex'-ing". 

Ski— ''She". 

Skydsgut — "Shyss'-goott"; y as in "syllable". 

Skydsstation — "Shvss'-sla-shoon"; a as in "father". 

Smaapenge — "Smoa'-peng-e". 

Smor — "Smorr"; o as in "fur". 

Stabbur— " Stabb'-boor ". 

St<jlkja:rre — "Stool'-chair-re": short ai, with trilled r. 

Storthing— " Stoor'-ting ". 

Thing— "Ting". 

Tine— "Tee'-ne". 

Tre Kvarter til ett— " Tray k'var-ter' till et". 

Vser saa god — "Vair so goo". 

Pronunciation of Norwegian proper names 
used in this handbook 

Aabrekk^' ' Aw'-brekk-ke ". 

Aalesund — " Aw'-le-soond ". 

Jr.giT — " x\y'-geer ". 

Arne— "Ahr'-ne". 

Asbjornsen — " Ahs'-b'yearn-sen"; run the b and y together. 

Balder— "Eahl'-der".' 

Balcstrand- "Bah'-l^strand"; a as in "father". 

Bandak-Nordsjo — "Bahn'-dak-Noor'-sho"; das win "fur". 



362 PRONUNCIATION OF NORWEGIAN NAMES 

Bergen — ''Ber'-gen"; ^e;^ as ^am in "again". 

Bergenhus — '* Ber-gen-hoos' ". 

Bjornson — ''B'yearn'-son"; put the lips in position to 

pronounce h, then suddenly pronounce the rest. 
Bolkesjo— "B511'-ke-sho"; b as u in ''fur". 
Botten— ''Bott'-ten". 

Dronthv-^im — ''Diont'-hime"; an anglicised form; the Nor- 
wegian is Trondhjem, ''Tronn'-yemm". 
Dyreskard — -''D/'-re-skahr"; y as French ii or German u, 

Eide— ''Ay'-de". 
Eidfjord— ''Ayd'-f'yoord". 
Ekeberg— '' Ache'-e-berg ". 
Essef jord — " Ess'-se-f 'yoord ". 

Fimbul— "Fimm'-bull". 
Floifjeld— ''Floi'-f'yell". 
Folsjo— '*Foll'-sho"; o as z^ in ''fur". 
Framnais — " Fram'-ness ". 
Freya — "Fray'-yah". 
Fridthjof— "Fritt'-yoff". 
Gausta — "Gous'-tah"; ou as in "house". 
Geiranger — "Gay'-rang-er"; w^ as in "sing". 
Grjotlid— " Gr'yoot'-lee". 

Grundesbro — "Groon'-des-broo"; hro means "bridge". 
Grytereidsnib — "Gree'-te-rayds-nib"; nih means "pin- 
nacle". 
Gudvangen — "Good'-vang-en"; ng as in "sing". 
Gunnar — " Goon'-nar ". 
Gynt — " Gynt"; the g is hard; y as in "syllable". 

Haakon— "Hoh'-kon". 

Hardanger — "Har-dang'-er"; ng as in "sing"; a as in 

"father'*. 
Haukeli— " How'-ke-lee ". 
Heimskringla — "Hames'-kring-la". 
Himingen — ' ' Him'-ing-en ". 



PRONUNCIATION OF NORWEGIAN NAMES 363 

Hitterdal— ' ' Hitt'-tgr-dahl ". 

Hjalmar— ''Yar-mar". 

Hjell^-^'YellMe". 

Hjorth— "Yort". 

Hogrending — ''Hoag'-ren-ning". 

Holmenut — **HolI'-me-nute"; nut means ''peak". 

Horgheim — " Horg'-hame ". 

Ingeborg— -"Ing'-e-borg"; ng as in "sing". 

Jarl— ''Yarl". 

Johan — "Yoo-hann' '. 

Jonas — ''YcxZ-nas") a as in ''father". 

Jordalsnut — " Yoor -dahls-nute"; nut means "peak". 

Jotunheim — " Yoo'-tune-hame". 

Kjeipen — " Chaip'-en ". 

Knut— "Knute". 

Kyrre — "Chyrr'-re"; y is like French tt, German u, 

Laagen — "Loh-gen"; gen as gain in "again". 
Lagaboter — "La'-ga-bo-ter"; a as in "father"; o like u in 

"fur". 
Legreid — " Leg'-rayd ". 
Lie— "Lee". 
Loen — "Loo'-en". 
Lofoten — " Loo'-f oo-ten ". 
Loke— "Loo'-ke". 
Lyngenfjord — "Lyng-en-f 'yoord ". 

Maan — "Mawn". 

Melkevold— " Meir-ke-voll ". 

Magero — "Ma'-ger-o"; a as in "father"; g hard; o as u in 

"fur". 
Magnhild— " Magn'-hild ". 
Marok— "Mah'-rok". 
Mindresunde — " Min'-drS-sun-de ". 
Mjolnir— "M'yol'-nir". 



364 PRONUNCIATION OF NORWEGIAN NAMES 

Nierodal — '' Nare'- o-dahZ " 

Naesdal— '^ Ness'-dahl". 

Nidaros — ''Nee'-dar-oose"; the 5 is sharp. 

Nordf jord — '' Noor'-f 'yoord ". 

Norge — ''Nor'-ge"; the g is hard as in ''go". 

Odda— -'Odd'-da"; also- spelled Odde, ''Odd'-de". 
Oif jord— '' Oy'-f 'yoord ". 
Ole— ''Oo'-le". ' 

Peer— ''Payr". 

Puddef jord— 'Tood'-de-f 'yoord ". 

Eagnarok — ' ' Rahg'-na-rok ". 
Raud — ''Rowd"; ow as in ''rowdy". 
Rauma — "Row'-ma"; ow as in "rowdy". 
Ravnef jeld— " Rahv'-ne-f yell ". 
Rjukanfos — " R'yoo'-kahn-f oss ". 
Roldal— "Rol'-dahl"; o as u in "mr". 
Roldalssaaten — " Rol'-dahls-soh-t :jn ". 
Riistoen — "Rust'-o-en"; u is like oo short. 
Rustofjeld— "Rust'-o-f'yell ". 

Saathorn— " Soht'-hoorn ". 

Seljestad— " SelF-ye-stad ". 

Sivle— "SivvMe". 

Skaala— "Skoh'-la". 

Skager Rak — " Skager-rak' ". 

Skjeggedalsfos — "Shegg'-ge-dahls-foss"; joss means "water- 
fall". 

Sognef jord — " Sog'-ne-f 'yoord ". 

Solbakken— "SooF-bak-ken"; a as in "father". 

Sorfjord — "Sur'-f'yoord". 

Stalheim— " Stahl'-hanie ". 

Stryn— "Stryn", almost like "Streen". 

SvolvaT— " SvolF-vare ". 

Synnove — "Syn'-no-ve", almost like "Sin-neve"; the y is, 
however, like the French u or German ii. 



PRONUNCIATION OF NORWEGIAN NAMES 365 

Tegner — *' Teg-neer' ". 
Telemarken— '' Ter-le-mar-ken ". 
Thor— ''Toor". 
Thora— ''Toor^-a". 
Tinoset— " Tinn'-oos-et ". 
Tins jo — ''Tinn'-sho"; o as u in '"fur". 
Tjugum — " Chu'-gum ". 
Troldtinder— ''Troll'-tind-er". 
Tromso — "Trr/om'-so", olike it in '^fur". 
Trondhjem — *' TrCnn'-ySmm ". 
Trygg\'ason — " Trygg'-va-son ". 
Tvinde— ''TVin'-ne". 

Tyskebrygge — "Tys'-ke-bryg-ge"; y like French u short; 
g hard. 

Udsigt— "Ood'-sikt". 
Utigaard— " Oo'-ti-gore ". 

Valkendorf— ''Val'-ken-dorf". 

Vangsnaes — "Vangs'-ness"; ncBs means "cape" or ''head- 
land". 
Vossevangen — ''Voss'-se-vang-en". 
Vrang — ''V'rang". 

Yri — "Y'-ree"; the y is like French u or German u. 



INDEX 



Aabrekke, Rasmus. 183. 184, 187. 
Aalesund, 210-213. 
Advent Bay. 240. 
Akershus, 31. 
Amusements, 31 5-318. 
Anglo-Saxon, 250-251. 320. 
Archaeology, 351-352. 
Architecture, 46-47. 55-56. 58. 68- 

70, 80. 222. 
Arctic exploration, 230. 240. 358. 
Army, 309. 
Ame. 176, 188. 
Aryans, 278-283. 
Asgard. 67, 284. 
Athletics, 31, 48, 315. 
Aurora borealis, 217. 229. 241. 
Avalanches, 99, 193. 

Balder, 172. 294. 

Balestrand, 163. 

Balholm, 163. 

Bandak-Nordsjo canal, 71-73. 

Barley, 171. 

Berakup, Mt., 119. 

Bergen, 125-141. 

Bergenhus, 139. 

Betrothal. 181-182. 

Bibliography, 351-359. 

Bing, 187. 

Binocular Vision. 19-20. 

Biographies, 355. 

Bjomson, B., 154. 160, 176, 207. 

208, 215, 342-.350. 
Boats, 133, 161-162. 227-228. 
Bolkesjo, 56. 
Books to read. 351-359. 
Botten, 79-81. 
Bratlandsdal, 98-99. 
Brigsdal. 180. 
Brigsdal glacier. 183-187. 
Bread, 60-61, 85. 
Buar glacier, 112. 
Bull, Ole, 16. 131, 191. ^ 

Cabinet, 307. 

Canals, 71-72, 302. 

Cathedral, 222-223. 

Catholics, 138, 223, 2.30, 298. 

Charles XII. 31. 50-51. 

Cheese, 76. 

Child life, 43, 71. 96-97. 143-144, 

147. 358-359. 
Christiania, 30-48. 
Churches, ancient, 40-47, 68-70. 
Climate. 33, 121, 171, 218-219, 228. 

235, 274-277. 
Colbjomson, 50. 
Confirmation, 107-108. 
Conquest, Norman, 248-252 
Constitution, 262, 264. 
Cooking, 60-61, 168. 
Coronations, 26&-270. 
Costumes, 55, 81, 132. 143. IGS. 180- 

181, 199-200. 
Courts of Justice, 309. 
Courtship, 90, 181-182. 
Crevasses, 124. 186-187. 
Crusades, 69, 127. 252-254. 



Dairy work. 84-86, 198, 207. 
Days, length of, 31-32, 230. 238. 

241. 275-276. 
Democratic spirit. 17. 
Denmark, relations with, 259-262, 

265-266. 
Dramas, Norse. 357-358. 
Dress, 55. 81. 132, 143. 168. 180- 

181. 199-200. 
Drinking habit. 140-141, 317-318. 
Drontheim, 220. 
Dyreskard Pass, 82-84. 

Eddas, the, 173, 321-328. 
Education, 43, 131, 227, 289-292. 
Eide, Thor, 166-167. 183. 
Eider ducks, 234. 
Eidfjord, 116-117. 
Ekeberg, 30-32. 
Emigration, 32-33, 172, 284. 
England, Norsemen in, 246-252. 
Espelands Fos, 101-102. 
Essefjord, 160. 

Fisheries, 133-134, 163-165, 211, 

213. 225, 228. 
Fish warehovises. 135-136. 
Fladbrod, 60-61. 85. 
Floifield, 125. 
Folgefond, 100-101. 
Folsjo, 56. 

Fortress (Frederikssten), 49-51. 
Framne.es, 161. 

France, Norsemen in, 245-249. 
Frederikssten, 49-51. 
Frithjofs Saga. 160-161. 

Gausta. Mt.. 59, 61. 

Geirangerfiord, 205-206, 208. 

Geology, 271-273. 

Germans in Bergen, 135-137. 

Giants, 179. 

Gipsies, 158. 

Glaciers, 92, 112, J 21, 123-124, 174- 

175, 177-178, 185. 189. 193, 

272—274 
Goblins, 67. 182. 
Gol. church of, 46-47. 
Government, 306-309. 
Grieg, Edvard, 16, 131. 163. 330. 
Grjotlid road. 203-204. 206-207. 
Gr\^tereids glacier, 174-175. 
Gudvangen, 154. 

Haakon VII. King.. 43. 149, 224, 

265-269, 306. 
Hammerfest. 235-236. 
Hanseatic League. 135-136, 260. 
Hanseatic warehouses, 135-137. 
Hardanger. 105-106, 110. 
Hardanger glacier, 121. 123-124. 
Hardanger Vidda, 121. 
Hay-making, 55. 89. 167. 205. 
Historv of Norway. 256-270. 354- 

355. 
Hitterdal church, 68-70. 
Hjelle, 195-196. 
Holberg. 141-142, 331. 



368 



INDEX 



Morses, 54, 78, 126, 153. 
Hospitality, 172-173, 284. 
Hotels, 53, 146. 
Hulder, the, 97. 
Hunting, 53, 79, 81, 120. 

Ibsen Henrik, 16, 45, 154, 208. 338- 

342. 
Incomes, 34, 111, 311-314. 
Ingeborg, 160-161. 
Inns, 53, SO, 102, 197, 206 

Jordalsnut, 148, 152. 
Jotunheim, 294. 

Kariols, 54. 

King Haakon VII, 43, 149. 224. 265- 

269, 306. 
King's Hall, 139. 
Kjeipen, IGO. 
Knives, 169-170, 200. 
Kongsberg, 52-53. 

Labor legislation, 313. 

Language, 111-112, 319-320, 359. 

Lapps, 119-120, 199-203, 231-233. 

286-288. 
Legislature, National, 263-268, 306- 

307. 
Lie, Jonas. 33. 151. 207. 336-337. 
Liquor traffic. 140-141, 318. 
Literature, Norse, 16, 321-349. 
Little Rjukan Falls, 78. 
Locks in canal, 71-72. 
Loen Lake, 188-194. 
Lofoten Islands, 225-229. 
Log houses, 95. 
Loke, 165. 
Lote Fos, 102-103. 
Lutheran Church , 298-299. 
Lyngenfjord, 233-234. 

Maan river, 61-66. 
Maelkevold glacier, 177-178, 
Magero, 237. 
Magnhild, 176. 

Maps. Underwood system, 22. 
Margaret of Denmark, 259. 
Markets, 34-37, 130-133, 229. 
Marriage, 90, 108, 180-181. 
Marok, 205, 208-209. 
Maud, Queen, 43, 224, 267, 306. 
Midnight sun, 15, 231, 238, 239-241. 
Midtlaeger saeter, 84-86. 
Millo, 145, 169. 
Mindresunde farm, 170-172. 
Mjolnir, 156. 
Moe, Bishop, 165-166. 
Money system, 312. 
Munsch, A., 110. 
Musicians, 16. 

Mythology, Norse, 66-67, 83-84, 
172, 293-295. 

Naerodal, 147-148. 
Naerofjord, 154-157, 159-160. 
Nansen, Frith jof, 131, 240, 358. 
Navy, 310. 

Nelson, Hon. Knute, 11. 
Nid, river, 218-219. 
Nidaros, 219, 223. 

Nights, length of. 132, 137, 176, 
230. 238, 241. 275-276. 



Nordfjord, 166. 
Norman Conquest, 248-252. 
Norman French, 250-251. 
Normandy, 248. 
Norsemen, ancient, 242-250. 
North Cape, 236-239. 
North Pole, 240. 
Northern lights, 229, 241. 

Occupations, 311-314. 

Odde, 104. 

Odin, 178. 

Oifjord, Lake, 116-117. 

Olaf, Saint, 220, 223. 

Olaf Tryggvason, 220-221, 256- 

257, 295-296. 
Olden, Lake, 116. 173-179, 186. 
Olden Valley, 169. 
CTscarshal, 31, 48. 

Paganism, ancient, 47, 66-67, 82- 

84, 156, 165, 177-178, 293- 

297, 355-356. 
Palace, royal, 43-44. 
Pariiament, 263-268, 306-307. 
Parliament House, 38. 39-40. 
Pass, Dyreskard, 82-84. 
Popitlation, 37, 130, 172, 270, 283- 

284. 
Plague, the, 115. 
Post-Office business, 39, 59, 75, 304- 

305, 313-314. 
Posting, 54, 57-58, 74-76, 100, 303- 

304. 

Queen Maud. 43. 224, 267, 306. 

Railways, 301-302. 
Rauma river, 214. 
Ravnef jeld glacier, 193. 
Reformation, Lutheran, 260, 298. 
Reindeer, 119-120, 198, 201, 232. 
Religion, 138, 293-300, 355-356. 
Religious services, 70, 105, 106-108. 
Rembesdals Fos, 122. 
Rembesdalsvand, 123-124. 
Ringedal, 113. 
Rjukan Fos, 63-67. 
Roads, 87, 94, 98-99, 150-151, 203- 

204. 
Roldal village, 93. 
Rolf, 42, 212, 215, 247-248. 
Romsdal, 214-218. 
Romsdalshom, 214-215. 
Rustoi Fos. 178-179. 

Saeter life, 84-86, 197-198. 

Sagas, old, 41-42, 128, 160-162, 

328-329. 
Salmon, 163-165. 
Schools, 43, 131, 227, 289-292. 
Seljestad gorge, 100. 
Seten farm, 188. 
Sevle Fos, 152. 
Sicily, Normans in, 252. 
Silver mines, 52. 
Simodal, 122. 
Skaala, Mt., 195-197. 
Skars Fos, 102-103. 
Skjaeggedals Fos, 113-114. 
Snow in midsummer, 82-84. 
Sod roofs, 80, 96. 
Sognefjord. 142. 158-160, 163. 



INDEX 



369 



SSrfjord. 103-104. 

Spitzbergen. 239-240. 

Sports, 53. 79, 120-121. 141. 196. 

Stabburs. 55-56, 58, 80. 

Stalheim's hotel, 146, 148. 

Stalheim's river, 145, 150. 

Stereographs, 19-22. 25. 

Stereoscope, 22, 26. 

Stolkjaerres, 54, 57. 100. 

Storehouses. 55-56. 58, 80. 

Stories of Norse life, 356-357. 

Storthing, 263-268, 306-307. 

Stryns Lake. 195-196. 

Sun. Midnight. 15, 231, 238-241. 

Superstitions, 67, 79. 97. 112. 182. 

185. 189-190. 197-198. 202. 

233. 
Surnames. 183-184. 251. 
Svolvaer. 225-229. 
Sweden, relations with, 31. 50-51, 

259. 260-261. 262-265. 

Tegnfer. 160-161. 

Telegraphs. 304. 

Telephones, 304. 

Theatres, 317. 

Thor, 156. 165. 294. 

Thrift. 17. 78, 94. 205, 285. 

Tiner, 110-111. 

Timber churches, 46-47. 68-70. 

Tinoset, 60. 

Tinsjo. 60. 

Tjugum, 160. 

Topography, 351. 

Tordenskjold. 50. 

Torvloisa, 206. 

Travel books of. 352-354, 



Traveling with stereographs, 22-24. 
Trolds, 67, 177, 179. 
Troldtinder, 217-218. 
Tromsdal, 231. 
Tromso, 229-231. 
Trondhiem, 218-224, 269. 
Tvindefos, 143. 
Tyskebrygge. 134. 

Utigards Fos. 192. 

Valkendorf. 134. 137. 

Vangsnaes, 161. 

Victoriahavn, 226, 301. 

Vide saeter, 197-198. 

Vide valley. 197-198. 

Vikings, the. 41. 162, 215-216, 244- 

247. 254-255. 
Viking-ship. 40-42. 
Vorings Fos. 117-118. 
Vossevangen, 142. 

Water-power, 145, 169. 

Weather, 82-84, 121, 126. 151. 155. 

171, 211. 228-229. 235. 275- 

276. 
Weddings. 180-182. 
Welhaven, 334. 
Wergeland, 106, 109-110. 
Whaling. 235. 

William the Conqueror, 249. 
Winter sports, 40. 48. 
Witch-peaks, the, 217-218. 

Yri, 175-176. 
Yri Fos, 175-176. 
Ygdrasil. 294. 



UNDERWOOD 

STEREOSCOPIC TOURS 



The Underwood Stereoscopic Totirs are put up in neat Volume Cases, or 
Underwood Extension Cabinets, and the stereographed places are arranged in 
the order in which a tourist might visit the actual scenes. 

Note that these are all Original Stereographs, not copies. 

To accompany these Tours we recommend our "Twentieth Century" 
Aluminum Mahogany Stereoscope. A higher-priced stereoscope can be 
furnished if desired. 

AUSTRIA TOUR — Giving 84 positions, and case. 

BELGIUM TOUR — Giving 24 positions, explanatory notes on backs of 
stereographs, and case. 

BRITISH-BOER WAR — Giving 36 positions, and case. 

BURMA TOUR — Giving 50 positions, and case. 

CANADA TOUR — Giving 72 positions, explanatory notes on backs of stereo- 
graphs, and case. 

CEYLON TOUR — Giving 30 positions, and case. 

CHINA TOUR — Giving 100 positions, with guide book by Prof. James 
Ricalton, 358 pages, cloth, and eight Underwood patent maps and case. 

Boxer Uprising Tour — Cheefoo, Taku, Tientsin — (a part of the China 
Totu-) — Giving26 positions, withguide book, three patent maps and case. 

Hongkong and Canton Tour (a part of the China Totir) — Giving 15 posi- 
tions, with guide book, three patent maps and case. 

Pekin Tour (a part of the China Tour) — Giving 32 positions, with guide 
book, two patent maps and case. 

UBA AND PORTO RICO TOUR —Giving 100 positions, and case. 

DENMARK TOUR —Giving 36 positions, and case. 

ECUADOR TOUR — Giving 42 positions, and case. 

EGYPT TOUR —Giving 100 positions, with guide book by Prof. James 
H. Breasted, Ph. D., 360 pages, cloth, and twenty Underwood patent 
maps and case. 

ELEPHANT SET — Giving 12 positions, explanatory notes on backs of 
stereographs, and case. 

ENGLAND TOUR — Giving 100 positions, and case. 

FRANCE TOUR —Giving 100 positions, and case. 

GERMANY TOUR — Giving 100 positions, explanatory notes on backs of 
stereographs and case. 

GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA TOUR— Giving 18 positions, with guide 
book, two Underwood patent maps and case. 

GREECE TOUR —Giving 100 positions, with gmde book by Prof. Rufus 
B. Richardson, Ph.D., fourteen Underwood patent maps and case. 
Athens Tour (a part of the Greece Tour) — Giving 27 positions, with guide 
book by Prof. Richardson, four Underwood patent maps and case. 



INDIA TOUR — Giving 100 positions, with giiide book by Prof. James 
Ricalton, ten Underwood patent maps and case. 

Bombay to Cashmere Tour (a part of the India Tour) — Giving 24 posi- 
tions, with gxiide book by Prof. Ricalton, five Underwood patent maps 
and case. 

IRELAND TOUR — Giving 100 positions, with guide book by Charles 
Johnston, seven Underwood patent maps and case. 
Queenstown, Cork and Dublin Tour (a part of the Ireland Tour) — Giving 
36 positions, with guide book by Charles Johnston, three Underwood 
patent maps and case. 

ITALY TOUR —Giving 100 positions, with guide book by D. J. Ellison, D.D., 
and Prof. James C. Egbert, Jr., Ph.D., 602 pages, cloth, and ten Under- 
wood patent maps and case. 
Rome Tour (a part of Italy Tour) — With gvude book by Dr. Ellison and 
Prof. Egbert, 310 pages, cloth, and five Underwood patent maps and 
case. 

JAMAICA TOUR — Giving 24 positions, and case. 

JAPAN TOUR — Giving 100 positions, explanatory notes on backs of 
stereographs, and case. 

JAVA TOUR — Giving 36 positions, and case. 

KOREA TOUR — Giving 48 positions, and case. 

MANCHURIA TOUR — Giving 18 positions, and case. 

MEXICO TOUR — Giving 100 positions, and case. 

NIAGARA FALLS TOUR — Givin-g 18 positions, with guide book, and two 
Underwood patent maps and case. 

NORWAY TOUR — Giving 100 positions, with guide book edited by Prof. 
Julius E. Olson, Ph. D., eight Underwood patent maps and case. 
The Hardanger Fjord Tour (a part of the Norway Tour) — Giving 21 posi- 
tions, with guide book edited by Prof. Olson, two Underwood patent 
maps and case. 

PALESTINE TOUR — Giving 100 positions, with guide book by Rev. Jesse 
L. Hurlbut, D.D., 220 pages, cloth, and seven Underwood patent maps 
and case. 
Jerusalem Tour (a part of the Palestine Tour) — Giving 27 positions, with 
guide book, by Dr. Hurlbut, one patent map and case. 

PALESTINE TOUR No 2 — Giving 100 positions, all different from those in 
the above tours, and case. 

PANAMA TOUR — Giving 36 positions, and case. 

PARIS EXPOSITION TOUR —Giving 36 positions, and case. 

PERU TOUR — Giving 60 positions, and case. 

PHILIPPINE TOUR — Giving 100 positions, and case. 

PILGRIMAGE TO SEE THE HOLY FATHER —Giving 36 positions, with 
guide book, by Rev. Father John Talbot Smith, LL.D., two Underwood 
■ patent maps and case. 

PORTUGAL TOUTR —Giving 60 positions, and case. 

PRESIDENT McKINLEY TOUR —Giving 60 positions, with guide book, 183 
pages, cloth and case. 

PRESIDENT McKINLEY TOUR No s A —Giving 60 positions, with guide 
book, 183 pages, cloth, and genuine leather case, velvet lined, inscrip- 
tion in silver. 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TOUR — Giving 36 positions, and case. 

REAL CHILDREN IN MANY LANDS TOUR —Giving 18 positions, with 
guide book by M. S. Emery, 222 pages, cloth, and case. 

RUBY MINING SET — Giving 9 positions, with explanatory notes on backs 
of stereographs, and case. 



RUSSIA TOUR — Giving 100 positions, with gtiide book by M. S. Emery, 
216 pages, cloth, and ten Underwood patent maps and case. 

Moscow Tour (a part of the Russia Tour) — Giving 27 positions, with 
guide book, three patent maps and case. 

St. Petersburg Tour (a part of the Russia Tour) — Giving 39 positions, 
with guide-book, five patent maps and case. 

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR — Giving 100 positions, and case. 

SAN FRANCISCO DISASTER TOUR — Giving 36 positions, and case. 

SCOTLAND TOUR — Giving 84 positions, explanatory notes on backs of 
stereographs and case. 

SICILY TOUR — Giving 54 positions, and case. 

SPAIN TOUR — Giving 100 positions, and case. 

"SPANISH BULL FIGHT" —Giving 12 positions, and case. 

ST. PIERRE AND MONT PELEE TOUR —Giving 18 positions, with guide 
book by the celebrated traveler, G«orge Kennan, and three Underwood 
patent maps and case. 

SWEDEN TOUR —Giving 100 positions, with guide book edited by Prof. 
Jules Mauritzson, eight Underwood patent maps and case. 
Stockholm Tour (a part of the Sweden Tour ) — Giving 36 positions, guide 
book edited by Prof. Mauritzson, three Underwood patent maps and 
case. 

SWITZERLAND TOUR —Giving 100 positions, with gtiide book by M. S. 

Emery, 274 pages, cloth, and eleven Underwood patent maps and case. 
Bernese Alps Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour) — Giving 27 positions. 

with gmde book, three patent maps and case. 
Engadine Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour) — Giving 8 positions, 

with guide book, four patent maps and case. 
Lake Lucerne Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour) — Giving 11 positions, 

with guide book, three patent maps and case. 
Mont Blanc Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tour) — Giving 23 positions, 

with guide book, two patent maps and case. 
Zermatt Tour (a part of the Switzerland Tovir) — Giving 15 iX)sitions, with 

guide book, two patent maps and case. 

" TRAVEL LESSONS ON THE LIFE OF JESUS" —Giving 36 positions, 
with complete hand-book, 230 pages, cloth, by Rev. Wm. Byron Fur- 
bush, Ph.D., and foiu" Underwood patent maps and case. 

" TRAVEL LESSONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT "—Giving 51 positions, 
with complete hand-book, 211 pages, cloth, by Rev. Wm. Byron 
Forbush, Ph.D., and four Underwood patent maps and case. 

Other interesting and instructive tours can be made up from the large 
collection of original stereographs always in stock, or from new stereographs 
which are constantly being added. New guide books, written by authorities 
on each coimtry, are being added each year. 

We advise customers to purchase complete tours on the cotmtries that they 
may be interested in. One himdred stereographed places of one coimtry will 
generally give much better satisfaction than the same number scattered 
over several cotmtries. Many of our patrons are placing all of our educational 
tours in their homes alongside of the standard works on those covmtries. 
ScJhools and pubhc libraries are turning more and more to the stereoscope to 
put their students and readers in touch with the actual places of which they 
are studying. The United States Government considered them so valuable 
that all educational tours published to date, with the new Underwood 
Extension Cabinet, were piirchased for the United States Mihtary Academy 
at West Point. 

When two or more of the "100" tours are wanted, we recommend the 
"Underwood Extension Cabinet". It can be "built up" from time to time, 
as desired, holding from 200 to 2000 stereographed places, or more. 

UNDER^VOOD C^ UNDERWOOD 
3-5 West 19th Street, Cor. Fifth Avenue, New York 

LONDON, ENGLAND. OTTAWA, KANSAS 

TORONTO. CANADA. SAN FRANCISCO. CALIFORNIA 



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NORWAY TOUR, map 




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EXPLANATIONS OF MAP SYSTEM. 



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(1) The red lines on this map mark out the territory shown in the respective stereographs. 

(2) The numbers in circles refer to the stereographs correspondingly numbered. 
(3' Theap8x( <^ ), or pointfrom which two tines branch out, indicates the place from which view wastake 

we lookout, in the stereograph, o.crthe territory between the two lines. 

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the space shown in a stereograph 

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( 7) When the field of view is limited the location is shown by an arrow running from the encircled number. 



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EXPLANATIONS OF MAP SYSTEM. 

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